Teacher-Brother Dave's initial comments: I am presenting some of my Topical Studies from the fully public domain, 2097 page, Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth and with my added comments. The Revealed text is free of copyright, so you may freely share individually these supernal quotes with your friends and relatives. But my order of selections, font types for emphasis and my added comments are Copyright 2021 by Dave@PureChristians.org All Rights Reserved. Contact me first about using the whole Study or group of Studies.
[My added comments of explanation below are in these square brackets]
Topical Study number 134
"KNOW and related words !"
Part 58
Compiled July 28, 2021 by Dave@PureChristians.org
The Urantia Book
PAPER 117 GOD THE SUPREME, Cont.
5. THE OVERSOUL OF CREATION
[Paper:Section.Paragraph (numbers)]
117:5.1 The great Supreme is the cosmic oversoul of the grand [time-space] universe. In him the qualities and quantities of the cosmos do find their deity reflection; his deity nature is the mosaic composite of the total vastness of all creature-Creator nature throughout the evolving [700,000 local] universes. And the Supreme is also an actualizing Deity embodying a creative will which embraces an evolving universe purpose.
117:5.2 The intellectual, potentially personal selves of the finite emerge from the Third Source and Center [God the Infinite Spirit on Paradise Who is the Third Person of the Eternal Paradise Trinity] and achieve finite time-space Deity synthesis in the Supreme. When the [human] creature submits to the will of the Creator, he does not submerge or surrender his personality; the individual personality participants in the actualization of the finite God do not lose their volitional selfhood by so functioning. Rather are such personalities progressively augmented by participation in this great Deity adventure; by such union with divinity man exalts, enriches, spiritualizes, and unifies his evolving self to the very threshold of supremacy.
117:5.3 The evolving immortal soul of man, the joint creation of the material mind and the Adjuster, ascends as such to Paradise and subsequently, when mustered into the Corps of the Finality, becomes allied in some new way with the spirit-gravity circuit of the Eternal Son by a technique of experience known as finaliter transcendation. Such finaliters thus become acceptable candidates for experiential recognition as personalities of God the Supreme. And when these mortal intellects in the unrevealed future assignments of the Corps of the Finality attain the seventh [highest !] stage of spirit existence, such dual minds will become triune. These two attuned minds, the human and the divine, will become glorified in union with the experiential mind of the then actualized Supreme Being. [!!]
117:5.4 In the eternal future, God the Supreme will be actualized -- creatively expressed and spiritually portrayed -- in the spiritualized mind, the immortal soul, of ascendant man, even as the Universal Father was so revealed in the earth life of Jesus.
117:5.5 Man does not unite with the Supreme and submerge his personal identity, but the universe repercussions of the experience of all men do thus form apart of the divine experiencing of the Supreme. "The act is ours, the consequences God's ."
117:5.6 The progressing personality leaves a trail of actualized reality as it passes through the ascending levels of the universes. Be they mind, spirit, or energy, the growing creations of time and space are modified by the progression of personality through their domains. When man acts, the Supreme reacts, and this transaction constitutes the fact of progression.
117:5.7 The great circuits of energy, mind, and spirit are never the permanent possessions of ascending personality; these ministries remain forever a part of Supremacy. In the mortal experience the human intellect resides in the rhythmic pulsations of the adjutant mind-spirits and effects its decisions within the arena produced by encircuitment within this ministry. Upon mortal death the human self is everlastingly divorced from the adjutant circuit. While these adjutants never seem to transmit experience from one personality to another, they can and do transmit the impersonal repercussions of decision-action through God the Sevenfold to God the Supreme. (At least this is true of the adjutants of worship and wisdom.)
117:5.8 And so it is with the spiritual circuits: Man utilizes these in his ascent through the universes, but he never possesses them as a part of his eternal personality. But these circuits of spiritual ministry, whether [Jesus Christ's] Spirit of Truth, Holy Spirit, or superuniverse spirit presences, are receptive and reactive to the emerging values in ascending personality, and these values are faithfully transmitted through [God] the Sevenfold to the Supreme.
117:5.9 While such spiritual influences as the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Truth are local universe ministrations, their guidance is not wholly confined to the geographic limitations of a given local creation. As the ascending mortal passes beyond the boundaries of his local universe of origin, he is not entirely deprived of the ministry of the Spirit of Truth [the Spirit Presence of Jesus Christ Michael and thus also the Spirit of God the Universal Father !!] which has so constantly taught and guided him through the philosophic mazes of the material and morontial [soul reality] worlds, in every crisis of ascension unfailingly directing the Paradise pilgrim, ever saying: "This is the way." When you leave the domains of the local universe, through the ministry of the spirit of the emerging Supreme Being and through the provisions of superuniverse reflectivity, you will still be guided in your Paradise ascent by the comforting directive spirit of the Paradise bestowal Sons of God. [We will always be led and guided by our Sovereign Savior-Father-Brother-Friend Jesus Christ Michael ! After being granted Paradise Residence, we will volunteer to return to our universe home of Nebadon to work with and under Jesus; and later we will go with Him out into the larger Master Universe space levels in the next higher Ultimate Destiny, and then unrevealed adventures continue with Jesus after that and without end !]
117:5.10 How do these manifold circuits of cosmic ministry register the meanings, values, and facts of evolutionary experience in the Supreme? We are not exactly certain, but we believe that this registry takes place through the persons of the Supreme Creators [our Master Creator Son of God Jesus Christ Michael] of Paradise origin who are the immediate bestowers of these circuits of time and space. The mind-experience accumulations of the seven adjutant mind-spirits, in their ministry to the physical level of intellect, are a part of the local universe experience of the Divine Minister, and through this Creative Spirit they probably find registry in the mind of Supremacy. Likewise are mortal experiences with the Spirit of Truth and the Holy Spirit probably registered by similar techniques in the person of Supremacy.
117:5.11 Even the experience of man and Adjuster must find echo in the divinity of God the Supreme, for, as the Adjusters experience, they are like the Supreme, and the evolving soul of mortal man is created out of the pre-existent possibility for such experience within the Supreme.
117:5.12 In this manner do the manifold experiences of all creation become a part of the evolution of Supremacy. Creatures merely utilize the qualities and quantities of the finite as they ascend to the Father; the impersonal consequences of such utilization remain forever a part of the living cosmos, the Supreme person. [!!]
117:5.13 What man himself takes with him as a personality possession are the character consequences of the experience of having used the mind and spirit circuits of the grand universe in his Paradise ascent. When man decides, and when he consummates this decision in action, man experiences, and the meanings and the values of this experience are forever a part of his eternal character on all levels, from the finite to the final. Cosmically moral and divinely spiritual character represents the creature's capital accumulation of personal decisions which have been illuminated by sincere worship, glorified by intelligent love, and consummated in brotherly service.
117:5.14 The evolving Supreme will eventually compensate finite creatures for their inability ever to achieve more than limited experience contact with the universe of universes. Creatures can attain the Paradise Father, but their evolutionary minds, being finite, are incapable of really understanding the infinite and absolute Father. But since all creature experiencing registers in, and is apart of, the Supreme, when all creatures attain the final level of finite existence, and after total universe development makes possible their attainment of God the Supreme as an actual divinity presence, then, inherent in the fact of such contact, is contact with total experience. [!!!] The finite of time contains within itself the seeds of eternity; and we are taught that, when the fullness of evolution witnesses the exhaustion of the capacity for cosmic growth, the total finite will embark upon the absonite [higher, transcendental] phases of the eternal career in quest of the Father as Ultimate.
6. THE QUEST FOR THE SUPREME
117:6.1 We seek the Supreme in the universes, but we find him not. "He is the within and the without of all things and beings, moving and quiescent. Unrecognizable in his mystery, though distant, yet is he near." The Almighty Supreme is "the form of the yet unformed, the pattern of the yet uncreated." The Supreme is your universe home, and when you find him, it will be like returning home. He is your experiential parent, and even as in the experience of human beings, so has he grown in the experience of divine parenthood. He knows you because he is creaturelike as well as creatorlike.
117:6.2 If you truly desire to find God, you cannot help having born in your minds the consciousness of the Supreme. As God is your divine Father, so is the Supreme your divine Mother, in whom you are nurtured throughout your lives as universe creatures. "How universal is the Supreme -- he is on all sides! The limitless things of creation depend on his presence for life, and none are refused."
117:6.3 What [Jesus Christ] Michael is to Nebadon, the Supreme is to the finite [grand universe, supreme] cosmos; his Deity is the great avenue through which the love of the Father flows outward to all creation, and he is the great avenue through which finite creatures pass inward in their quest of the Father, who is love. Even Thought Adjusters are related to him; in original nature and divinity they are like the Father, but when they experience the transactions of time in the universes of space, they become like the Supreme.
117:6.4 The act of the creature's choosing to do the will of the Creator is a cosmic value and has a universe meaning which is immediately reacted to by some unrevealed but ubiquitous force of co-ordination, probably the functioning of the ever-enlarging action of the Supreme Being.
117:6.5 The morontia soul of an evolving mortal is really the son of the Adjuster action of the Universal Father and the child of the cosmic reaction of the Supreme Being, the Universal Mother. The mother influence dominates the human personality throughout the local universe childhood of the growing soul. The influence of the Deity parents becomes more equal after the Adjuster fusion and during the superuniverse career, but when the creatures of time begin the traversal of the central universe of eternity, the Father nature becomes increasingly manifest, attaining its height of finite manifestation upon the recognition of the Universal Father and the admission into the Corps of the Finality.
117:6.6 In and through the experience of finaliter attainment the experiential mother qualities of the ascending self become tremendously affected by contact and infusion with the spirit presence of the Eternal Son and the mind presence of the Infinite Spirit. Then, throughout the realms of finaliter activity in the grand universe, there appears a new awakening of the latent mother potential of the Supreme, a new realization of experiential meanings, and a new synthesis of experiential values of the entire ascension career. It appears that this realization of self will continue in the universe careers of the sixth-stage finaliters until the mother inheritance of the Supreme attains to finite synchrony with the Adjuster inheritance of the Father. This intriguing period of grand universe function represents the continuing adult career of the ascendant and perfected mortal.
117:6.7 Upon the completion of the sixth stage of existence and the entrance upon the seventh and final stage of spirit status, there will probably ensue the advancing ages of enriching experience, ripening wisdom, and divinity realization. In the nature of the finaliter this will probably equal the completed attainment of the mind struggle for spirit self-realization, the completion of the co-ordination of the ascendant man-nature with the divine Adjuster-nature within the limits of finite possibilities. Such a magnificent universe self thus becomes the eternal finaliter son of the Paradise Father as well as the eternal universe child of the Mother Supreme, a universe self qualified to represent both the Father and Mother of universes and personalities in any activity or undertaking pertaining to the finite administration of created, creating, or evolving things and beings. [What a Glorious Destiny awaits us !]
117:6.8 All soul-evolving humans are literally the evolutionary sons of God the Father and God the Mother, the Supreme Being. But until such time as mortal man becomes soul-conscious of his divine heritage, this assurance of Deity kinship must be faith realized. Human life experience is the cosmic cocoon in which the universe endowments of the Supreme Being and the universe [indwelling Adjuster] presence of the Universal Father (none of which are personalities) are evolving the morontia soul of time and the human-divine finaliter character of universe destiny and eternal service.
117:6.9 Men all too often forget that God is the greatest experience in human existence. Other experiences are limited in their nature and content, but the experience of God has no limits save those of the creature's comprehension capacity, and this very experience is in itself capacity enlarging. When men search for God, they are searching for everything. When they find God, they have found everything. The search for God is the unstinted bestowal of love attended by amazing discoveries of new and greater love to be bestowed.
117:6.10 All true love is from God, and man receives the divine affection as he himself bestows this love upon his fellows. Love is dynamic. It can never be captured; it is alive, free, thrilling, and always moving. Man can never take the love of the Father and imprison it within his heart. The Father's love can become real to mortal man only by passing through that man's personality as he in turn bestows this love upon his fellows. The great circuit of love is from the Father, through sons to brothers, and hence to the Supreme. The love of the Father appears in the mortal personality by the ministry of the indwelling Adjuster. Such a God-knowing son reveals this love to his universe brethren, and this fraternal affection is the essence of the love of the Supreme.
117:6.11 There is no approach to the Supreme except through experience, and in the current epochs of creation there are only three avenues of creature approach to Supremacy:
117:6.12 #1. The Paradise Citizens descend from the eternal Isle through Havona, where they acquire capacity for Supremacy comprehension through observation of the Paradise-Havona reality differential and by exploratory discovery of the manifold activities of the Supreme Creator Personalities, ranging from the Master Spirits to the Creator Sons.
117:6.13 #2. The time-space ascenders coming up from the evolutionary universes of the Supreme Creators make close approach to the Supreme in the traversal of Havona as a preliminary to the augmenting [increasing] appreciation of the unity of the Paradise Trinity.
117:6.14 #3. The Havona natives acquire a comprehension of the Supreme through contacts with descending pilgrims from Paradise and ascending pilgrims from the seven superuniverses. Havona natives are inherently in position to harmonize the essentially different viewpoints of the citizens of the eternal Isle and the citizens of the evolutionary universes.
117:6.15 To evolutionary creatures there are seven [Superuniverses] great approaches to the Universal Father, and each of these Paradise ascensions passes through the divinity of one of the Seven Master Spirits; and each such approach is made possible by an enlargement of experience receptivity consequent upon the creature's having served in the superuniverse reflective of the nature of that Master Spirit. The sum total of these seven experiences constitutes the present-known limits of a creature's consciousness of the reality and actuality of God the Supreme. [Then are the ever higher God the Ultimate, God the Absolute and Eternally God the Universal Father-Infinite I AM]
117:6.16 It is not only man's own limitations which prevent him from finding the finite God; it is also the incompletion of the universe; even the incompletion of all creatures -- past, present, and future -- makes the Supreme inaccessible. God the Father can be found by any individual who has attained the divine level of Godlikeness, but God the Supreme will never be personally discovered by any one creature until that far-distant time when, through the universal attainment of perfection, all creatures will simultaneously find him.
117:6.17 Despite the fact that you cannot, in this universe age, personally find him as you can and will find the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, nevertheless, the Paradise ascent and subsequent universe career will gradually create in your consciousness the recognition of the universe presence and the cosmic action of the God of all experience. The fruits of the spirit are the substance of the Supreme as he is realizable in human experience.
193:2.2 [Jesus:] ...And the fruits of the divine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-knowing mortals are: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace. ... [now, back to our study:]
117:6.18 Man's sometime attainment of the Supreme is consequent upon his fusion with the spirit of Paradise Deity. With Urantians [humans of Earth] this spirit is the Adjuster presence of the Universal Father; and though the Mystery Monitor is from the Father and like the Father, we doubt that even such a divine gift can achieve the impossible task of revealing the nature of the infinite God to a finite creature. We suspect that what the Adjusters will reveal to future seventh-stage finaliters will be the divinity and nature of God the Supreme. And this evelation will be to a finite creature what the revelation of the Infinite would be to an absolute being.
117:6.19 The Supreme is not infinite, but he probably embraces all of infinity that a finite creature can ever really comprehend. To understand more than the Supreme is to be more than finite!
117:6.20 All experiential creations are interdependent in their realization of destiny. Only existential reality is self-contained and self-existent. Havona and the seven superuniverses require each other to achieve the maximum of finite attainment; likewise will they be sometime dependent on the future [Ultimate Master] universes of outer space for finite transcendence.
117:6.21 A human ascender can find the Father; God is existential and therefore real, irrespective of the status of experience in the total universe. But no single ascender will ever find the Supreme until all ascenders have reached that maximum universe maturity which qualifies them simultaneously to participate in this discovery.
117:6.22 The Father is no respecter of persons; he treats each of his ascending sons as cosmic individuals. The Supreme likewise is no respecter of persons; he treats his experiential children as a single cosmic total.
117:6.23 Man can discover the Father in his heart, but he will have to search for the Supreme in the hearts of all other men; and when all creatures perfectly reveal the love of the Supreme, then will he become a universe actuality to all creatures. And that is just another way of saying that the universes will be settled in light and life.
117:6.24 The attainment of perfected self-realization by all personalities plus the attainment of perfected equilibrium throughout the universes equals the attainment of the Supreme and witnesses the liberation of all finite reality from the limitations of incomplete existence. Such an exhaustion of all finite potentials yields the completed attainment of the Supreme and may be otherwise defined as the completed evolutionary actualization of the Supreme Being himself.
117:6.25 Men do not find the Supreme suddenly and spectacularly as an earthquake tears chasms into the rocks, but they find him slowly and patiently as a river quietly wears away the soil beneath.
117:6.26 When you find the Father, you will find the great cause of your spiritual ascent in the universes; when you find the Supreme, you will discover the great result of your career of Paradise progression.
117:6.27 But no God-knowing mortal can ever be lonely in his journey through the cosmos, for he knows that the Father walks beside him each step of the way, while the very way that he is traversing is the presence of the Supreme. [Knowing our Father God and his infinite love gives each of us perfect and eternal joy and peace and gratitude and much more !]
7. THE FUTURE OF THE SUPREME
117:7.1 The completed realization of all finite potentials equals the completion of the realization of all evolutionary experience. This suggests the final emergence of the Supreme as an almighty Deity presence in the universes. We believe that the Supreme, in this stage of development, will be as discretely personalized as is the Eternal Son, as concretely powerized as is the Isle of Paradise, as completely unified as is the Conjoint Actor, and all of this within the limitations of the finite possibilities of Supremacy at the culmination of the present universe age. [!]
117:7.2 While this is an entirely proper concept of the future of the Supreme, we would call attention to certain problems inherent in this concept:
117:7.3 #1. The Unqualified Supervisors of the Supreme could hardly be deitized at any stage prior to his completed evolution, and yet these same supervisors even now qualifiedly exercise the sovereignty of supremacy concerning the universes settled in light and life.
117:7.4 #2. The Supreme could hardly function in the Trinity Ultimate until he had attained complete actuality of universe status, and yet the Trinity Ultimate is even now a qualified reality, and you have been informed of the existence of the Qualified Vicegerents of the Ultimate.
117:7.5 3. The Supreme is not completely real to universe creatures, but there are many reasons for deducing that he is quite real to the Sevenfold Deity, extending from the Universal Father on Paradise [on down to] to the Creator Sons and the Creative Spirits of the local universes. [Interesting mysteries here !]
117:7.6 It may be that on the upper limits of the finite, where time conjoins transcended time, there is some sort of blurring and blending of sequence. It may be that the Supreme is able to forecast his universe presence onto these supertime levels and then to a mited degree anticipate future evolution by reflecting this future forecast back to the created levels as the Immanence of the Projected Incomplete. Such phenomena may be observed wherever finite makes contact with superfinite, as in the experiences of human beings who are indwelt by Thought Adjusters that are veritable predictions of man's future universe attainments throughout all eternity.
117:7.7 When mortal ascenders are admitted to the finaliter corps of Paradise, they take an oath to the Paradise Trinity, and in taking this oath of allegiance, they are thereby pledging eternal fidelity to God the Supreme, who is the Trinity as comprehended by all finite creature personalities. Subsequently, as the finaliter companies function throughout the evolving universes, they are solely amenable to the mandates of Paradise origin until the eventful times of the settling of local universes in light and life. As the new governmental organizations of these perfected creations begin to be reflective of the emerging sovereignty of the Supreme, we observe that the outlying finaliter companies then acknowledge the jurisdictional authority of such new governments. It appears that God the Supreme is evolving as the unifier of the evolutionary Corps of the Finality, but it is highly probable that the eternal destiny of these seven corps will be directed by the Supreme as a member of the Ultimate Trinity.
117:7.8 The Supreme Being contains three superfinite possibilities for universe manifestation:
117:7.9 #1. Absonite collaboration in the first experiential Trinity.[!]
117:7.10 #2. Coabsolute relationship in the second experiential Trinity.[!!]
117:7.11 #3. Coinfinite participation in the Trinity of Trinities, but we have no satisfactory concept as to what this really means. [!!!]
[Note: For more on this, see in The FOREWORD: XII. The Trinities 0:12.1 through 0:12.9]
117:7.12 This is one of the generally accepted hypotheses of the future of the Supreme, but there are also many speculations concerning his relations to the present grand universe subsequent to its attainment of the status of light and life.
117:7.13 The present goal of the superuniverses is to become, as they are and within their potentials, perfect, even as is Havona. This perfection pertains to physical and spiritual attainment, even to administrative, governmental, and fraternal development. It is believed that, in the ages to come, the possibilities for disharmony, maladjustment, and misadaptation will be eventually exhausted in the superuniverses. The energy circuits will be in perfect balance and in complete subjugation to mind, while spirit, in the presence of personality, will have achieved the dominance of mind. [Three level of Perfection: 1. Eternally Perfect Paradise 2. Perfected Havona 3. Perfecting experiential Supreme Grand Universe in time and space.]
17:7.14 It is conjectured that at this far-distant time the spirit person of the Supreme and attained power of the Almighty will have achieved co-ordinate development, and that both, as unified in and by the Supreme Mind, will factualize as the Supreme Being, a completed actuality in the universes -- an actuality which will be observable by all creature intelligences, reacted to by all created energies, co-ordinated in all spiritual entities, and experienced by all universe personalities.
117:7.15 This concept implies the actual sovereignty of the Supreme in the grand universe. It is altogether likely that the present Trinity administrators will continue as his vicegerents, but we believe that the present demarcations between the seven superuniverses will gradually disappear, and that the entire grand universe will function as a perfected whole. [!!]
117:7.16 It is possible that the Supreme may then be personally resident on Uversa, the headquarters of [our] Orvonton, from which he will direct the administration of the time creations, but this is really only a conjecture. Certainly, though, the personality of the Supreme Being will be definitely contactable at some specific locality, although the ubiquity of his Deity presence will probably continue to permeate the universe of universes. What the relation of the superuniverse citizens of that age will be to the Supreme we do not know, but it may be something like the present relationship between the Havona natives and the Paradise Trinity.
117:7.17 The perfected grand universe of those future days will be vastly different from what it is at present. Gone will be the thrilling adventures of the organization of the galaxies of space, the planting of life on the uncertain worlds of time, and the evolving of harmony out of chaos, beauty out of potentials, truth out of meanings, and goodness out of values. The time universes will have achieved the fulfillment of finite destiny! And perhaps for a space there will be rest, relaxation from the agelong struggle for evolutionary perfection. But not for long! Certainly, surely, and inexorably the enigma of the emerging Deity of God the Ultimate will challenge these perfected citizens of the settled universes just as their struggling evolutionary forebears were once challenged by the quest for God the Supreme. The curtain of cosmic destiny will draw back to reveal the transcendent grandeur of the alluring absonite quest for the attainment of the Universal Father on those new and higher levels revealed in the ultimate of creature experience. [Next will come an important and deep Paper on "Supreme and Ultimate - Time and Space", and then the 78 Papers on the Seven Bestowals and Life and Teachings of our Sovereign God-Man Savior Jesus Christ Michael ! Studying same, your knowledge of the Bible and of Jesus and of God will be greatly expanded by this mighty Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth !]
117:7.18 {Sponsored by a Mighty Messenger temporarily sojourning on Urantia.}
Topical Study number 134
"KNOW and related words !"
Part 59
Compiled July 30, 2021 by Dave@PureChristians.org
The Urantia Book
PAPER 118 SUPREME AND ULTIMATE -- TIME AND SPACE
0. Introduction
[Paper:Section.Paragraph (numbers)]
118:0.1 Concerning the several natures of Deity, it may be said:
118:0.2 #1. The Father is self-existent self. [I AM]
118:0.3 #2. The Son is coexistent self. [I AM as I AM Personality]
118:0.4 #3. The Spirit is conjoint-existent self. [I AM and I AM as I AM Spirit-Mind]
118:0.5 #4. The Supreme is evolutionary-experiential self. [I AM becoming in space-time]
118:0.6 #5. The Sevenfold is self-distributive divinity. [I AM Jesus Christ Michael here]
118:0.7 #6. The Ultimate is transcendental-experiential self. [I AM Absonite-Ultimate Reality]
118:0.8 #7. The Absolute is existential-experiential self. [I AM All Reality]
118:0.9 While God the Sevenfold is indispensable to the evolutionary attainment of the Supreme, the Supreme is also indispensable to the eventual emergence of the Ultimate. And the dual presence of the Supreme and the Ultimate constitutes the basic association of subabsolute and derived Deity, for they are interdependently complemental in the attainment of destiny. Together they constitute the experiential bridge linking the beginnings and the completions of all creative growth in the [larger and higher than our Supreme level Grand Universe, the] master universe.
118:0.10 Creative growth is unending but ever satisfying, endless in extent but always punctuated by those personality-satisfying moments of transient goal attainment which serve so effectively as the mobilization preludes to new adventures in cosmic growth, universe exploration, and Deity attainment.
118:0.11 While the domain of mathematics is beset with qualitative limitations, it does provide the finite mind with a conceptual basis of contemplating infinity. There is no quantitative limitation to numbers, even in the comprehension of the finite mind. No matter how large the number conceived, you can always envisage one more being added. And also, you can comprehend that that is short of infinity, for no matter how many times you repeat this addition to number, still always one more can be added. [or you could add a zero to the number to multiply by 10, or add a trillion more zero's and then take the factorial of that huge number ! For example 5! (five factorial) is 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120 and 10! is 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 3,628,800 These factorials of larger numbers get very big fast. Then that tremendously super-huge number could be factorialed again, and again an unlimited number of times ! That is always short of infinity !]
118:0.12 At the same time, the infinite series can be totaled at any given point, and this total (more properly, a subtotal) provides the fullness of the sweetness of goal attainment for a given person at a given time and status. But sooner or later, this same person begins to hunger and yearn for new and greater goals, and such adventures in growth will be forever forthcoming in the fullness of time and the cycles of eternity. [For example, many youth in the USA think they are adults when they become age 21 and enjoy that; but later, at ages 40, 60 and older, they are a wiser adult and should know that there is so much more to learn and experience as a forever ascending son of God and in and with Jesus here and beyond in Spirit !]
118:0.13 Each successive universe age is the antechamber of the following era of cosmic growth, and each universe epoch provides immediate destiny for all preceding stages. Havona, in and of itself, is a perfect, but perfection-limited, creation; Havona perfection, expanding out into the evolutionary superuniverses, finds not only cosmic destiny but also liberation from the limitations of pre-evolutionary existence.
1. TIME AND ETERNITY
118:1.1 It is helpful to man's cosmic orientation to attain all possible comprehension of Deity's relation to the cosmos. While absolute Deity is eternal in nature, the Gods [Trinity and Creator Sons and others] are related to time as an experience in eternity. In the evolutionary universes eternity is temporal everlastingness -- the everlasting now. [We all live in the NOW, and have potential to achieve the Eternal NOW !]
118:1.2 The personality of the mortal creature may eternalize by self-identification with the indwelling spirit through the technique of choosing to do the will of the Father. Such a consecration of will is tantamount to the realization of eternity-reality of purpose. This means that the purpose of the creature has become fixed with regard to the succession of moments; stated otherwise, that the succession of moments will witness no change in creature purpose. A million or a billion moments makes no difference. Number has ceased to have meaning with regard to the creature's purpose. Thus does creature choice plus God's choice eventuate in the eternal realities of the never-ending union of the spirit of God and the nature of man in the everlasting service of the children of God and of their Paradise Father. [!!!]
118:1.3 There is a direct relationship between maturity and the unit of time consciousness in any given intellect. The time unit may be a day, a year, or a longer period, but inevitably it is the criterion by which the conscious self evaluates the circumstances of life, and by which the conceiving intellect measures and evaluates the facts of temporal existence.
118:1.4 Experience, wisdom, and judgment are the concomitants of the lengthening of the time unit in mortal experience. As the human mind reckons backward into the past, it is evaluating past experience for the purpose of bringing it to bear on a present [Now !] situation. As mind reaches out into the future, it is attempting to evaluate the future significance of possible action. [Now !] And having thus reckoned with both experience and wisdom, the human will exercises judgment-decision in the present, [Now !] and the plan of action thus born of the past and the future becomes existent. [Now !]
118:1.5 In the maturity of the developing self, the past and future are brought together to illuminate the true meaning of the present. As the self matures, it reaches further and further back into the past for experience, while its wisdom forecasts seek to penetrate deeper and deeper into the unknown future. And as the conceiving self extends this reach ever further into both past and future, so does judgment become less and less dependent on the momentary present. In this way does decision-action begin to escape from the fetters of the moving present, [in the Circle of Eternity] while it begins to take on the aspects of past-future significance.
118:1.6 1. Patience is exercised by those mortals whose time units are short; true maturity transcends patience by a forbearance born of real understanding.
118:1.7 To become mature is to live more intensely in the present, at the same time escaping from the limitations of the present. The plans of maturity, founded on past experience, are coming into being in the present in such manner as to enhance the values of the future.
118:1.8 The time unit of immaturity concentrates meaning-value into the present moment in such a way as to divorce the present of its true relationship to the not-present -- the past-future. The time unit of maturity is proportioned so to reveal the co-ordinate relationship of past-present-future that the self begins to gain insight into the wholeness of events, begins to view the landscape of time from the panoramic perspective of broadened horizons, begins perhaps to suspect the nonbeginning, nonending eternal continuum, the fragments of which are called time. [!! The absolute of time is Eternity -- The eternal Ring of Light. ]
118:1.9 On the levels of the infinite and the absolute the moment of the present contains all of the past as well as all of the future. I AM signifies also I WAS and I WILL BE. And this represents our best concept of eternity and the eternal.
118:1.10 [Important !] On the absolute and eternal level, potential reality is just as meaningful as actual reality. [!] Only on the finite level and to time-bound creatures does there appear to be such a vast difference. To God, as absolute, an ascending mortal who has made the eternal decision is already a Paradise finaliter. But the Universal Father, through the indwelling Thought Adjuster, is not thus limited in awareness but can also know of, and participate in, every temporal struggle with the problems of the creature ascent from animallike to Godlike levels of existence.
2. OMNIPRESENCE AND UBIQUITY
[Very complex ! Very hard to even partly grasp.]
118:2.1 The ubiquity of Deity [God present everywhere here at the same time] must not be confused with the ultimacy of the divine omnipresence. It is volitional with the Universal Father that the Supreme, the Ultimate, and the Absolute should compensate, co-ordinate, and unify his time-space ubiquity and his time-space-transcended omnipresence with his timeless and spaceless universal and absolute presence. And you should remember that, while Deity ubiquity may be so often space associated, it is not necessarily time conditioned.
118:2.2 As mortal and morontia ascenders you progressively discern God through the ministry of God the Sevenfold. [Starting with our universe Creator Father-Son Jesus Christ Michael Who Reveals the Universal Father God to us] Through Havona you discover God the Supreme. On Paradise you find him as a person, and then as finaliters you will presently attempt to know him as Ultimate. Being finaliters, there would seem to be but one course to pursue after having attained the Ultimate, and that would be to begin the quest of the Absolute. No finaliter will be disturbed by the uncertainties of the attainment of the Deity Absolute since at the end of the supreme and ultimate ascensions he encountered God the Father. Such finaliters will no doubt believe that, even if they should be successful in finding God the Absolute, they would only be discovering the same God, the Paradise Father manifesting himself on more nearly infinite and universal levels. Undoubtedly the attainment of God in absolute would reveal the Primal Ancestor of universes as well as the Final Father of personalities. [The Primal and Final and Infinite Father-Force Source and Center of all Reality: The I AM]
118:2.3 God the Supreme may not be a demonstration of the time-space omnipresence of Deity, but he is literally a manifestation of divine ubiquity. Between the spiritual presence of the Creator and the material manifestations of creation there exists a vast domain of the ubiquitous becoming -- the universe emergence of evolutionary Deity.
118:2.4 If God the Supreme ever assumes direct control of the universes of time and space, we are confident such a Deity administration will function under the overcontrol of the Ultimate. In such an event God the Ultimate would begin to become manifest to the universes of time as the transcendental Almighty (the Omnipotent) exercising the overcontrol of supertime and transcended space concerning the administrative functions of the Almighty Supreme.
118:2.5 The mortal mind may ask, even as we do: If the evolution of God the Supreme to administrative authority in the grand universe is attended by augmented manifestations of God the Ultimate, will a corresponding emergence of God the Ultimate in the postulated universes of outer space be attended by similar and enhanced revelations of God the Absolute? But we [Mighty Messengers] really do not know.
3. TIME-SPACE RELATIONSHIPS
118:3.1 Only by ubiquity could Deity unify time-space manifestations to the finite conception, for time is a succession of instants while space is a system of associated points. You do, after all, perceive time by analysis and space by synthesis. You co-ordinate and associate these two dissimilar conceptions by the integrating insight of personality. Of all the animal world only man possesses this time-space perceptibility. To an animal, motion has a meaning, but motion exhibits value only to a creature of personality status.
118:3.2 Things are time conditioned, but truth is timeless. The more truth you know, the more truth you are, the more of the past you can understand and of the future you can comprehend.
118:3.3 Truth is inconcussible -- forever exempt from all transient vicissitudes, albeit never dead and formal, always vibrant and adaptable -- radiantly alive. [!!] But when truth becomes linked with fact, then both time and space condition its meanings and correlate its values. Such realities of truth wedded to fact become concepts and are accordingly relegated to the domain of relative cosmic realities.
118:3.4 The linking of the absolute and eternal truth of the Creator with the factual experience of the finite and temporal creature eventuates a new and emerging value of the Supreme. The concept of the Supreme is essential to the co-ordination of the divine and unchanging overworld with the finite and ever-changing underworld.
118:3.5 Space comes the nearest of all nonabsolute things to being absolute. Space is apparently absolutely ultimate. The real difficulty we have in understanding space on the material level is due to the fact that, while material bodies exist in space, space also exists in these same material bodies. While there is much about space that is absolute, that does not mean that space is absolute.
118:3.6 It may help to an understanding of space relationships if you would conjecture that, relatively speaking, space is after all a property of all material bodies. Hence, when a body moves through space, it also takes all its properties with it, even the space which is in and of such a moving body. [some mystery here !]
118:3.7 All patterns of reality occupy space on the material levels, but spirit patterns only exist in relation to space; they do not occupy or displace space, neither do they contain it. But to us the master riddle of space pertains to the pattern of an idea. When we enter the mind domain, we encounter many a puzzle. Does the pattern -- the reality -- of an idea occupy space? We really do not know, albeit we are sure that an idea pattern does not contain space. But it would hardly be safe to postulate that the immaterial is always nonspatial. [more mystery ! There are many hints and statements in this Revelation to intrigue and stimulate us to reflect deeply in further truth seeking !]
4. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CAUSATION
118:4.1 Many of the theologic difficulties and the metaphysical dilemmas of mortal man are due to man's mislocation of Deity personality and consequent assignment of infinite and absolute attributes to subordinate Divinity and to evolutionary Deity. You must not forget that, while there is indeed a true First Cause, there are also a host of co-ordinate and subordinate causes, both associate and secondary causes.
118:4.2 The vital distinction between first causes and second causes is that first causes produce original effects which are free from inheritance of any fact or derived from any antecedent causation. Secondary causes yield effects which invariably exhibit inheritance from other and preceding causation.
[Review on the three Absolutes:]
105: 3. THE SEVEN ABSOLUTES OF INFINITY
105:3.6 #5. The Deity Absolute. The causational, potentially personal possibilities of universal Reality, the totality of all Deity potential. The Deity Absolute is the purposive qualifier of the unqualified, absolute, and nondeity Realities. The Deity Absolute is the qualifier of the absolute and the absolutizer of the qualified -- the destiny inceptor. [Some high philosophers have postulated that we are also children of the Deity Absolute; we do know that our glorious Paradise Destiny is to be in groups of one thousand Beings in "the Corps of the Finality", and forevermore following Jesus' all present Spirit of Truth of Reality and our Being. It is in the Eternal Father-Son Union of God and Jesus as our True GOD-MAN Spirit Personality that we are made. We always carry this "Spirit DNA", (roughly speaking, of) our Personality-Pattern-Identity.]
105:3.7 #6. The Unqualified Absolute. Static, reactive, and abeyant; the unrevealed cosmic infinity of the I AM; totality of nondeified reality and finality of all nonpersonal potential. Space limits the function of the Unqualified, but the presence of the Unqualified is without limit, infinite. There is a concept periphery to the master universe, but the presence of the Unqualified is limitless; even eternity cannot exhaust the boundless quiescence of this nondeity Absolute. [The present epoch of the Grand Universe lasts for possibly a trillion years and includes seven trillion planets similar to earth with progressing Human life. The Master Universe is much longer and much larger, well beyond Human conceptions here; then (and now is) will come the age and eternity and "eternity of eternities" of the Absolute-Infinite Universe, not yet much revealed to Humans here in the very first stage of eternal ascension as a Divinely Beloved son of God in Jesus. Astronomy news: Two trillion galaxies have now been discovered by our astronomers and cosmologists ! Some postulate that there might be an infinite number in the Cosmos-Infinite !]
105:3.8 #7. The Universal Absolute. Unifier of the deified and the undeified; correlator of the absolute and the relative. The Universal Absolute (being static, potential, and associative) compensates the tension between the ever-existent and the uncompleted.
[Back to our study:]
118:4.3 The purely static potentials inherent in the Unqualified Absolute are reactive to those causations of the Deity Absolute which are produced by the actions of the Paradise Trinity. In the presence of the Universal Absolute these causative-impregnated static potentials forthwith become active and responsive to the influence of certain transcendental agencies whose actions result in the transmutation of these activated potentials to the status of true universe possibilities for development, actualized capacities for growth. It is upon such matured potentials that the creators and controllers of the grand universe enact the never-ending drama of cosmic evolution.
118:4.4 Causation, disregarding existentials, is threefold in its basic constitution. As it operates in this universe age and concerning the finite level of the seven superuniverses, it may be conceived as follows:
118:4.5 #1. [Absolute] Activation of static potentials. The establishment of destiny in the Universal Absolute by the actions of the Deity Absolute, operating in and upon the Unqualified Absolute and in consequence of the volitional mandates of the Paradise Trinity.
118:4.6 #2. [Transcendental] Eventuation of universe capacities. This involves the transformation of undifferentiated potentials into segregated and defined plans. This is the act of the Ultimacy of Deity and of the manifold agencies of the transcendental level. Such acts are in perfect anticipation of the future needs of the entire master universe. It is in connection with the segregation of potentials that the Architects of the Master Universe exist as the veritable embodiments of the Deity concept of the universes. Their plans appear to be ultimately space limited in extent by the concept periphery of the master universe, but as plans they are not otherwise conditioned by time or space.
118:4.7 #3. [Supreme] Creation and evolution of universe actuals. It is upon a cosmos impregnated by the capacity-producing presence of the Ultimacy of Deity that the Supreme Creators operate to effect the time transmutations of matured potentials into experiential actuals. Within the master universe all actualization of potential reality is limited by ultimate capacity for development and is time-space conditioned in the final stages of emergence. The Creator Sons going out from Paradise are, in actuality, transformative creators in the cosmic sense. But this in no manner invalidates man's concept of them as creators; from the finite viewpoint they certainly can and do create. [You and I and this large local universe of Nebadon are all made and maintained by our Sovereign Creator God-Man Jesus Christ Michael; universe and individual perfection is our destiny -- Light and Life in the Family of God !!]
5. OMNIPOTENCE AND COMPOSSIBILITY
118:5.1 The omnipotence of Deity does not imply the power to do the nondoable. Within the time-space frame and from the intellectual reference point of mortal comprehension, even the infinite God cannot create square circles [but four infinite diameter circles can be positioned to make a perfect square of any finite size] or produce evil that is inherently good. God cannot do the ungodlike thing. [God does not make junk ! Humans are of value in time and in eternity !] Such a contradiction of philosophic terms is the equivalent of nonentity and implies that nothing is thus created. A personality trait cannot at the same time be Godlike and ungodlike. Compossibility is innate in divine power. [Compossibility is the ability or possibility of coexisting with another.] And all of this is derived from the fact that omnipotence not only creates things with a nature but also gives origin to the nature of all things and beings.
118:5.2 In the beginning the Father does all, but as the panorama of eternity unfolds in response to the will and mandates of the Infinite, it becomes increasingly apparent that creatures, even men, are to become God's partners in the realization of finality of destiny. And this is true even in the life in the flesh; when man and God enter into partnership, no limitation can be placed upon the future possibilities of such a partnership. When man realizes that the Universal Father is his partner in eternal progression, when he fuses with the indwelling Father presence, he has, in spirit, broken the fetters of time and has already entered upon the progressions of eternity in the quest for the Universal Father. [!!!]
118:5.3 Mortal consciousness proceeds from the fact, to the meaning, and then to the value. Creator consciousness proceeds from the thought-value, through the word-meaning, to the fact of action. Always must God act to break the deadlock of the unqualified unity inherent in existential infinity. Always must Deity provide the pattern universe, the perfect personalities, the original truth, beauty, and goodness for which all subdeity creations strive. Always must God first find man that man may later find God. Always must there be a Universal Father before there can ever be universal sonship and consequent universal brotherhood.
6. OMNIPOTENCE AND OMNIFICENCE
118:6.1 God is truly omnipotent, but he is not omnificent -- he does not personally do all that is done. Omnipotence embraces the power-potential of the Almighty Supreme and the Supreme Being, but the volitional acts of God the Supreme are not the personal doings of God the Infinite.
118:6.2 To advocate the omnificence of primal Deity would be equal to disenfranchising well-nigh a million Creator Sons of Paradise, not to mention the innumerable hosts of various other orders of concurring creative assistants. There is but one uncaused Cause in the whole universe. All other causes are derivatives of this one First Great Source and Center. And none of this philosophy does any violence to the freewillness of the myriads of the children of Deity scattered through a vast universe.
118:6.3 Within a local frame, volition may appear to function as an uncaused cause, but it unfailingly exhibits inheritance factors which establish relationship with the unique, original, and absolute First Causes.
118:6.4 All volition is relative. In the originating sense, only the Father-I AM possesses finality of volition; in the absolute sense, only the Father, the Son, and the Spirit exhibit the prerogatives of volition unconditioned by time and unlimited by space. Mortal man is endowed with free will, the power of choice, and though such choosing is not absolute, nevertheless, it is relatively final on the finite level and concerning the destiny of the choosing personality.
118:6.5 Volition on any level short of the absolute encounters limitations which are constitutive in the very personality exercising the power of choice. Man cannot choose beyond the range of that which is choosable. He cannot, for instance, choose to be other than a human being except that he can elect to become more than a man; he can choose to embark upon the voyage of universe ascension, but this is because the human choice and the divine will happen to be coincident upon this point. And what a son desires and the Father wills will certainly come to pass. [That is a great law in our universe !]
118:6.6 In the mortal life, paths of differential conduct are continually opening and closing, and during the times when choice is possible the human personality is constantly deciding between these many courses of action. Temporal volition is linked to time, and it must await the passing of time to find opportunity for expression. Spiritual volition has begun to taste liberation from the fetters of time, having achieved partial escape from time sequence, and that is because spiritual volition is self-identifying with the will of God. [True spiritual liberty ! Will-union with/in God !]
118:6.7 Volition, the act of choosing, must function within the universe frame which has actualized in response to higher and prior choosing. The entire range of human will is strictly finite-limited except in one particular: When man chooses to find God and to be like him, such a choice is superfinite; only eternity can disclose whether this choice is also superabsonite.
118:6.8 To recognize Deity omnipotence is to enjoy security in your experience of cosmic citizenship, to possess assurance of safety in the long journey to Paradise. But to accept the fallacy of omnificence is to embrace the colossal error of Pantheism.
7. OMNISCIENCE AND PREDESTINATION
118:7.1 The function of Creator will and creature will, in the grand universe, operates within the limits, and in accordance with the possibilities, established by the Master Architects. This foreordination of these maximum limits does not, however, in the least abridge the sovereignty of creature will within these boundaries. Neither does ultimate foreknowledge -- full allowance for all finite choice -- constitute an abrogation of finite volition. A mature and farseeing human being might be able to forecast the decision of some younger associate most accurately, but this foreknowledge takes nothing away from the freedom and genuineness of the decision itself. The Gods have wisely limited the range of the action of immature will, but it is true will, nonetheless, within these defined limits.
118:7.2 Even the supreme correlation of all past, present, and future choice does not invalidate the authenticity of such choosings. It rather indicates the foreordained trend of the cosmos and suggests foreknowledge of those volitional beings who may, or may not, elect to become contributory parts of the experiential actualization of all reality.
118:7.3 Error in finite choosing is time bound and time limited. It can exist only in time and within the evolving presence of the Supreme Being. Such mistaken choosing is time possible and indicates (besides the incompleteness of the Supreme) that certain range of choice with which immature creatures must be endowed in order to enjoy universe progression by making freewill contact with reality.
118:7.4 Sin in time-conditioned space clearly proves the temporal liberty -- even license -- of the finite will. Sin depicts immaturity dazzled by the freedom of the relatively sovereign will of personality while failing to perceive the supreme obligations and duties of cosmic citizenship.
118:7.5 Iniquity in the finite domains reveals the transient reality of all God-unidentified selfhood. Only as a creature becomes God-identified, does he become truly real in the universes. Finite personality is not self-created, but in the superuniverse arena of choice it does self-determine destiny.
118:7.6 The bestowal of life renders material-energy systems capable of self-perpetuation, self-propagation, and self-adaptation. The bestowal of personality imparts to living organisms the further prerogatives of self-determination, self-evolution, and self-identification with a fusion spirit of Deity. [very important !]
118:7.7 Subpersonal living things [plants and animals] indicate mind activating energy-matter, first as physical controllers, and then as adjutant mind-spirits. Personality endowment [of us humans] comes from the Father and imparts unique prerogatives of choice to the living system. But if personality has the prerogative of exercising volitional choice of reality identification, and if this is a true and free choice, then must evolving personality also have the possible choice of becoming self-confusing, self-disrupting, and self-destroying. The possibility of cosmic self-destruction cannot be avoided if the evolving personality is to be truly free in the exercise of finite will.
118:7.8 Therefore is there increased safety in narrowing the limits of personality choice throughout the lower levels of existence. Choice becomes increasingly liberated as the universes are ascended; choice eventually approximates divine freedom when the ascending personality achieves divinity of status, supremacy of consecration to the purposes of the universe, completion of cosmic-wisdom attainment, and finality of creature identification with the will and the way of God. [Always ask and reflect: What would Jesus think and do? in all important matters.]
Topical Study number 134
"KNOW and related words !"
Part 60
Compiled August 02, 2021 by Dave@PureChristians.org
The Urantia Book
PAPER 118 SUPREME AND ULTIMATE -- TIME AND SPACE, Cont.
8. CONTROL AND OVERCONTROL
[Paper:Section.Paragraph (numbers)]
118:8.1 In the time-space creations, free will is hedged about with restraints, with limitations. Material-life evolution is first mechanical, then mind activated, and (after the bestowal of personality) it may become spirit directed. Organic evolution on the inhabited worlds is physically limited by the potentials of the original physical-life implantations of the Life Carriers.
118:8.2 Mortal man is a machine, a living mechanism; his roots are truly in the physical world of energy. Many human reactions are mechanical in nature; much of life is machinelike. But man, a mechanism, is much more than a machine; he is mind endowed and spirit indwelt; and though he can never throughout his material life escape the chemical and electrical mechanics of his existence, he can increasingly learn how to subordinate this physical-life machine to the directive wisdom of experience by the process of consecrating the human mind to the execution of the spiritual urges of the indwelling Thought Adjuster.
118:8.3 The spirit liberates, and the mechanism limits, the function of will. Imperfect choice, uncontrolled by mechanism, unidentified with spirit, is dangerous and unstable. Mechanical dominance insures stability at the expense of progress; spirit alliance liberates choice from the physical level and at the same time assures the divine stability produced by augmented universe insight and increased cosmic comprehension.
118:8.4 The great danger that besets the [human] creature is that, in achieving liberation from the fetters of the life mechanism, he will fail to compensate this loss of stability by effecting a harmonious working liaison with spirit. Creature choice, when relatively liberated from mechanical stability, may attempt further self-liberation independent of greater spirit identification.
118:8.5 The whole principle of biologic evolution makes it impossible for primitive man to appear on the inhabited worlds with any large endowment of self-restraint. Therefore does the same creative design which purposed evolution likewise provide those external restraints of time and space, hunger and fear, which effectively circumscribe the subspiritual choice range of such uncultured creatures. As man's mind successfully overstrides increasingly difficult barriers, this same creative design has also provided for the slow accumulation of the racial heritage of painfully garnered experiential wisdom -- in other words, for the maintenance of a balance between the diminishing external restraints and the augmenting internal restraints. [Humans will long ascend up through many higher soul reality and then many more higher Spirit Reality Heavens and then final Paradise perfection. Of the four limitations we have, listed easy to difficult to overcome, are: fear, hunger, time, space. Science educated mankind have now eliminated many unreasoned fears. Transcending space may take a trillion years. I now believe that Residents on Paradise are timeless and spaceless !!]
118:8.6 The slowness of evolution, of human cultural progress, testifies to the effectiveness of that brake -- material inertia -- which so efficiently operates to retard dangerous velocities of progress. Thus does time itself cushion and distribute the otherwise lethal results of premature escape from the next-encompassing barriers to human action. [Caution:] For when culture advances overfast, when material achievement outruns the evolution of worship-wisdom, then does civilization contain within itself the seeds of retrogression; and unless buttressed by the swift augmentation of experiential wisdom, such human societies will recede from high but premature levels of attainment, and the "dark ages" of the interregnum of wisdom will bear witness to the inexorable restoration of the imbalance between self-liberty and self-control. [True liberty is self-identification with God's will ! The terrible human news events here daily show the evils of false-liberty and the lack of self-control !]
118:8.7 The iniquity of Caligastia [the former evil Planetary Prince, was defeated by Jesus Christ Michael in A.D. 30 - on] was the by-passing of the time governor of progressive human liberation -- the gratuitous destruction of restraining barriers, barriers which the mortal minds of those times had not experientially overridden.
118:8.8 That mind which can effect a partial abridgment of time and space, by this very act proves itself possessed of the seeds of wisdom which can effectively serve in lieu of the transcended barrier of restraint.
118:8.9 Lucifer similarly sought to disrupt the time governor operating in restraint of the premature attainment of certain liberties in the local system. A local system settled in light and life has experientially achieved those viewpoints and insights which make feasible the operation of many techniques that would be disruptive and destructive in the presettled eras of that very realm.
118:8.10 As man shakes off the shackles of fear, as he bridges continents and oceans with his machines, generations and centuries with his records, he must substitute for each transcended restraint a new and voluntarily assumed restraint in accordance with the moral dictates of expanding human wisdom. These self-imposed restraints are at once the most powerful and the most tenuous of all the factors of human civilization -- concepts of justice and ideals of brotherhood. Man even qualifies himself for the restraining garments of mercy when he dares to love his fellow men, while he achieves the beginnings of spiritual brotherhood when he elects to mete out to them that treatment which he himself would be accorded, even that treatment which he conceives that God would accord them. [The "Golden Rule" is to treat others as you would want to be likewise treated; the much higher "Diamond Rule" is to treat all others as your believe that God or Jesus, One in Spirit, would do. What would Jesus do?]
118:8.11 An automatic universe reaction is stable and, in some form, continuing in the cosmos. A personality who knows God and desires to do his will, who has spirit insight, is divinely stable and eternally existent. Man's great universe adventure consists in the transit of his mortal mind from the stability of mechanical statics to the divinity of spiritual dynamics, and he achieves this transformation by the force and constancy of his own personality decisions, in each of life's situations declaring, "It is my will that your will [the perfect, eternal will of our all-wise and all-loving Father God] be done."
9. UNIVERSE MECHANISMS
118:9.1 Time and space are a conjoined mechanism of the [transcendental, future to us, higher,] master universe. They are the devices whereby finite creatures are enabled to coexist in the cosmos with the Infinite. Finite creatures are effectively insulated from the absolute levels by time and space. But these insulating media, without which no mortal could exist, operate directly to limit the range of finite action. Without them no creature could act, but by them the acts of every creature are definitely limited.
118:9.2 Mechanisms produced by higher minds function to liberate their creative sources but to some degree unvaryingly limit the action of all subordinate intelligences. To the creatures of the universes this limitation becomes apparent as the mechanism of the universes. Man does not have unfettered free will; there are limits to his range of choice, but within the radius of this choice his will is relatively sovereign.
118:9.3 The life mechanism of the mortal personality, the human body, is the product of supermortal creative design; therefore it can never be perfectly controlled by man himself. Only when ascending man, in liaison with the fused Adjuster, [God's will indwelling your mind and cocreating with your will the more real soul you !] self-creates the mechanism for personality expression, will he achieve perfected control thereof. [Wow ! What a tremendous and thrilling statement about our glorious eternal destiny !]
118:9.4 The grand universe is mechanism as well as organism, mechanical and living -- a living mechanism activated by a Supreme Mind, co-ordinating with a Supreme Spirit, and finding expression on maximum levels of power and personality unification as the Supreme Being. But to deny the mechanism of the finite creation is to deny fact and to disregard reality. [We must study and know the laws of physics and technology, the laws of moral social interaction, and the Laws of Spirit to better realize and harmonize total Cosmic Reality.]
118:9.5 Mechanisms are the products of mind, creative mind acting on and in cosmic potentials. Mechanisms are the fixed crystallizations of Creator thought, [!] and they ever function true to the volitional concept that gave them origin. But the purposiveness of any mechanism is in its origin, not in its function. [!!]
118:9.6 These mechanisms should not be thought of as limiting the action of Deity; rather is it true that in these very mechanics Deity has achieved one phase of eternal expression. The basic universe mechanisms have come into existence in response to the absolute will of the First Source and Center, [God the Universal Father-Infinite including Paradise Force and other non-personal Absolutes] and they will therefore eternally function in perfect harmony with the plan of the Infinite; they are, indeed, the nonvolitional patterns of that very plan.
118:9.7 We [Revelators] understand something of how the mechanism of Paradise is correlated with the personality of the Eternal Son; this is the function of the Conjoint Actor. [The Infinite Spirit when acting for God the Father and God the Son and the Father-Son Union and for Himself -- four functions] And we have theories regarding the operations of the Universal Absolute with respect to the theoretical mechanisms of the Unqualified [Absolute] and the potential person of the Deity Absolute. [of the Seven Absolutes of Infinity !] But in the evolving Deities of Supreme and Ultimate we observe that certain impersonal phases are being actually united with their volitional counterparts, and thus there is evolving a new relationship between pattern and person. [ ! Our Sovereign God-Man Jesus Christ Michael is our pattern personality !]
118:9.8 [Past and future Eternity is ALL NOW. The Revelators us time sequence to help us understand a little about timeless Eternal Sequence !] In the eternity of the past the Father and the Son found union in the unity of the expression of the Infinite Spirit. If, in the eternity of the future, the Creator Sons [our Jesus Christ Michael] and the Creative Spirits [our Divine Creative Minister -- Holy Spirit] of the local universes of time and space should attain creative union in the realms of outer space, what would their unity create as the combined expression of their divine natures? It may well be that we are to witness a hitherto unrevealed manifestation of Ultimate Deity, a new type of superadministrator. Such beings would embrace unique prerogatives of personality, being the union of personal Creator, impersonal Creative Spirit, mortal-creature experience, and progressive personalization of the Divine Minister. Such beings could be ultimate in that they would embrace personal and impersonal reality, while they would combine the experiences of Creator and creature. Whatever the attributes of such third persons of these postulated functioning trinities of the creations of outer space, they will sustain something of the same relation to their Creator Fathers and their Creative Mothers that the Infinite Spirit does to the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. [Note this continuing Trinity Pattern.]
118:9.9 God the Supreme is the personalization of all universe experience, the focalization of all finite evolution, the maximation of all creature reality, the consummation of cosmic wisdom, the embodiment of the harmonious beauties of the galaxies of time, the truth of cosmic mind meanings, and the goodness of supreme spirit values. And God the Supreme will, in the eternal future, synthesize these manifold finite diversities into one experientially meaningful whole, even as they are now existentially united on absolute levels in the Paradise Trinity.
10. FUNCTIONS OF PROVIDENCE
118:10.1 Providence does not mean that God has decided all things for us and in advance. God loves us too much to do that, for that would be nothing short of cosmic tyranny. Man does have relative powers of choice. Neither is the divine love that shortsighted affection which would pamper and spoil the children of men.
118:10.2 The Father, Son, and Spirit -- as the Trinity -- are not the Almighty Supreme, but the supremacy of the Almighty can never be manifest without them. The growth of the Almighty is centered on the Absolutes of actuality and predicated on the Absolutes of potentiality. But the functions of the Almighty Supreme are related to the functions of the Paradise Trinity.
118:10.3 It would appear that, in the Supreme Being, all phases of universe activity are being partially reunited by the personality of this experiential Deity. When, therefore, we desire to view the Trinity as one God, and if we limit this concept to the present known and organized grand universe, we discover that the evolving Supreme Being is the partial portraiture of the Paradise Trinity. And we further find that this Supreme Deity is evolving as the personality synthesis off finite matter, mind, and spirit in the grand universe.
118:10.4 The Gods have attributes but the Trinity has functions, and like the Trinity, providence is a function, the composite of the other-than-personal overcontrol of the universe of universes, extending from the evolutionary levels of the Sevenfold synthesizing in the power of the Almighty on up through the transcendental realms of the Ultimacy of Deity.
118:10.5 God loves each creature as a child, and that love overshadows each creature throughout all time and eternity. Providence functions with regard to the total and deals with the function of any creature as such function is related to the total. Providential intervention with regard to any being is indicative of the importance of the function of that being as concerns the evolutionary growth of some total; such total may be the total race, the total nation, the total planet, or even a higher total. It is the importance of the function of the creature that occasions providential intervention, not the importance of the creature as a person. [We each may add a little to God the Supreme by the Godly actions that we DO !]
118:10.6 Nevertheless, the Father as a person may at any time interpose a fatherly hand in the stream of cosmic events all in accordance with the will of God and in consonance with the wisdom of God and as motivated by the love of God. [Our God is all good !]
118:10.7 But what man calls providence is all too often the product of his own imagination, the fortuitous juxtaposition of the circumstances of chance. There is, however, a real and emerging providence in the finite realm of universe existence, a true and actualizing correlation of the energies of space, the motions of time, the thoughts of intellect, the ideals of character, the desires of spiritual natures, and the purposive volitional acts of evolving personalities. The circumstances of the material realms find final finite integration in the interlocking presences of the Supreme and the Ultimate.
118:10.8 As the mechanisms of the grand universe are perfected to a point of final precision through the overcontrol of mind, and as creature mind ascends to the perfection of divinity attainment through perfected integration with spirit, and as the Supreme consequently emerges as an actual unifier of all these universe phenomena, so does providence become increasingly discernible.
118:10.9 Some of the amazingly fortuitous conditions occasionally prevailing on the evolutionary worlds may be due to the gradually emerging presence of the Supreme, the foretasting of his future universe activities. Most of what a mortal would call providential is not; his judgment of such matters is very handicapped by lack of farsighted vision into the true meanings of the circumstances of life. Much of what a mortal would call good luck might really be bad luck; the smile of fortune that bestows unearned leisure and undeserved wealth may be the greatest of human afflictions; the apparent cruelty of a perverse fate that heaps tribulation upon some suffering mortal may in reality be the tempering fire that is transmuting the soft iron of immature personality into the tempered steel of real character.
118:10.10 There is a providence in the evolving universes, and it can be discovered by creatures to just the extent that they have attained capacity to perceive the purpose of the evolving universes. Complete capacity to discern universe purposes equals the evolutionary completion of the creature and may otherwise be expressed as the attainment of the Supreme within the limits of the present state of the incomplete universes.
118:10.11 The love of the Father operates directly in the heart of the individual, independent of the actions or reactions of all other individuals; the relationship is personal -- man and God. The impersonal presence of Deity (Almighty Supreme and Paradise Trinity) manifests regard for the whole, not for the part. The providence of the overcontrol of Supremacy becomes increasingly apparent as the successive parts of the universe progress in the attainment of finite destinies. As the systems, constellations, universes, and superuniverses become settled in light and life, the Supreme increasingly emerges as the meaningful correlator of all that is transpiring, while the Ultimate gradually emerges as the transcendental unifier of all things.
118:10.12 In the beginnings on an evolutionary world the natural occurrences of the material order and the personal desires of human beings often appear to be antagonistic. Much that takes place on an evolving world is rather hard for mortal man to understand -- natural law is so often apparently cruel, heartless, and indifferent to all that is true, beautiful, and good in human comprehension. But as humanity progresses in planetary development, we observe that this viewpoint is modified by the following factors:
118:10.13 #1. Man's augmenting vision -- his increased understanding of the world in which he lives; his enlarging capacity for the comprehension of the material facts of time, the meaningful ideas of thought, and the valuable ideals of spiritual insight. As long as men measure only by the yardstick of the things of a physical nature, they can never hope to find unity in time and space.
118:10.14 #2. Man's increasing control -- the gradual accumulation of the knowledge of the laws of the material world, the purposes of spiritual existence, and the possibilities of the philosophic co-ordination of these two realities. Man, the savage, was helpless before the onslaughts of natural forces, was slavish before the cruel mastery of his own inner fears. Semicivilized man is beginning to unlock the storehouse of the secrets of the natural realms, and his science is slowly but effectively destroying his superstitions while at the same time providing a new and enlarged factual basis for the comprehension of the meanings of philosophy and the values of true spiritual experience. Man, the civilized, will someday achieve relative mastery of the physical forces of his planet; the love of God in his heart will be effectively outpoured as love for his fellow men, while the values of human existence will be nearing the limits of mortal capacity. [Better times on earth are coming ! Man's philosophy is far too negative; as he lacks the strong seeking and eventual grasp of spiritual wisdom and spiritual insight as well a a deficiency of soul (moral) insight and intellectual insight.]
118:10.15 #3. Man's universe integration -- the increase of human insight plus the increase of human experiential achievement brings him into closer harmony with the unifying presences of Supremacy -- Paradise Trinity and Supreme Being. And this is what establishes the sovereignty of the Supreme on the worlds long settled in light and life. Such advanced planets are indeed poems of harmony, pictures of the beauty of achieved goodness attained through the pursuit of cosmic truth. And if such things can happen to a planet, then even greater things can happen to a system and the larger units of the grand universe as they too achieve a settledness indicating the exhaustion of the potentials for finite growth.
118:10.16 On a planet of this advanced order, providence has become an actuality, the circumstances of life are correlated, but this is not only because man has come to dominate the material problems of his world; it is also because he has begun to live according to the trend of the universes; he is following the pathway of Supremacy to the attainment of the Universal Father.
118:10.17 The kingdom of God is in the hearts of men, and when this kingdom becomes actual in the heart of every individual on a world, then God's rule has become actual on that planet; and this is the attained sovereignty of the Supreme Being.
118:10.18 To realize providence in time, man must accomplish the task of achieving perfection. But man can even now foretaste this providence in its eternity meanings as he ponders the universe fact that all things, be they good or evil, work together for the advancement of God-knowing mortals in their quest for the Father of all.
118:10.19 Providence becomes increasingly discernible as men reach upward from the material to the spiritual. The attainment of completed spiritual insight enables the ascending personality to detect harmony in what was theretofore chaos. Even morontia mota [soul wisdom-philosophy] represents a real advance in this direction.
118:10.20 Providence is in part the overcontrol of the incomplete Supreme manifested in the incomplete universes, and it must therefore ever be:
118:10.21 #1. Partial -- due to the incompleteness of the actualization of the Supreme Being, and
118:10.22 #2. Unpredictable -- due to the fluctuations in creature attitude, which ever varies from level to level, thus causing apparently variable reciprocal response in the Supreme.
118:10.23 When men pray for providential intervention in the circumstances of life, many times the answer to their prayer is their own changed attitudes toward life. But providence is not whimsical, neither is it fantastic nor magical. It is the slow and sure emergence of the mighty sovereign of the finite universes, whose majestic presence the evolving creatures occasionally detect in their universe progressions. Providence is the sure and certain march of the galaxies of space and the personalities of time toward the goals of eternity, first in the Supreme, then in the Ultimate, and perhaps in the Absolute. And in infinity we believe there is the same providence, and this is the will, the actions, the purpose of the Paradise Trinity thus motivating the cosmic panorama of universes upon universes.
118:10.24 {Sponsored by a Mighty Messenger temporarily sojourning on Urantia.}
PAPER 119 THE BESTOWALS OF CHRIST MICHAEL
0. Introduction
119:0.1 Chief of the Evening Stars of Nebadon, I am assigned to Urantia [Earth] by Gabriel [The Chief Executive under Jesus in our local universe of Nebadon] on the mission of revealing the story of the seven bestowals of the Universe Sovereign, [Jesus Christ] Michael of Nebadon, and my name is Gavalia. In making this presentation, I will adhere strictly to the limitations imposed by my commission.
119:0.2 The attribute of bestowal is inherent in the Paradise Sons of the Universal Father. In their desire to come close to the life experiences of their subordinate living creatures, the various orders of the Paradise Sons are reflecting the divine nature of their Paradise parents. The Eternal Son of the Paradise Trinity led the way in this practice, having seven times bestowed himself upon the seven circuits of Havona during the times of the ascension of Grandfanda and the first of the pilgrims from time and space. And the Eternal Son continues to bestow himself upon the local universes of space in the persons of his representatives, the Michael and Avonal Sons.
119:0.3 When the Eternal Son bestows a Creator Son upon a projected local universe, that Creator Son assumes full responsibility for the completion, control, and composure of that new universe, including the solemn oath to the eternal Trinity not to assume full sovereignty of the new creation until his seven creature bestowals shall have been successfully completed and certified by the Ancients of Days of the superuniverse of jurisdiction. This obligation is assumed by every Michael Son who volunteers to go out from Paradise to engage in universe organization and creation.
119:0.4 The purpose of these creature incarnations is to enable such Creators to become wise, sympathetic, just, and understanding sovereigns. These divine Sons are innately just, but they become understandingly merciful as a result of these successive bestowal experiences; they are naturally merciful, but these experiences make them merciful in new and additional ways. These bestowals are the last steps in their education and training for the sublime tasks of ruling the local universes in divine righteousness and by just judgment.
119:0.5 Though numerous incidental benefits accrue to the various worlds, systems, and constellations, as well as to the different orders of universe intelligences affected and benefited by these bestowals, still they are primarily designed to complete the personal training and universe education of a Creator Son himself. These bestowals are not essential to the wise, just, and efficient management of a local universe, but they are absolutely necessary to a fair, merciful, and understanding administration of such a creation, teeming with its varied forms of life and its myriads of intelligent but imperfect creatures.
119:0.6 The Michael Sons begin their work of universe organization with a full and just sympathy for the various orders of beings whom they have created. [All humans, animals, plants and some other things on Earth, and our solar system and all of our large local universe of Nebadon were created by Jesus Christ Michael. We are sons of Jesus or Jesusonians. This is also in the Bible in John chapter 1 and Hebrews chapter 1] They have vast stores of mercy for all these differing creatures, even pity for those who err and flounder in the selfish mire of their own production. But such endowments of justice and righteousness will not suffice in the estimate of the Ancients of Days. These triune rulers of the superuniverses will never certify a Creator Son as Universe Sovereign until he has really acquired the viewpoint of his own creatures by actual experience in the environment of their existence and as these very creatures themselves. In this way such Sons become intelligent and understanding rulers; they come to know the various groups over which they rule and exercise universe authority. By living experience they possess themselves of practical mercy, fair judgment, and the patience born of experiential creature existence.
119:0.7 The local universe of Nebadon is now ruled by a Creator Son [our now Sovereign God-Man Jesus Christ Michael] who has completed his service of bestowal; he reigns in just and merciful supremacy over all the vast realms of his evolving and perfecting universe. Michael of Nebadon is the 611,121st bestowal of the Eternal Son upon the universes of time and space, and he began the organization of your local universe about four hundred billion years ago. [Our 400 billion year old universe is thus about 32 times older than presently estimated by our astronomers with their limited astronomical instruments. The Hubble space telescope and later better telescopes will show that our universe is much larger and much older than now thought. Now in year 2021, our astronomers have estimated that there are now TWO TRILLION or more galaxies in the universe ! There was a local stellar explosion here about 8 billion years ago, and that might be what is thought to be the "big Bang". Now, many astronomers ans cosmologists are rejecting the "big bang" theory. Google "New Physics" on that. There never was any "big bang" origin of our universe; it was created out of eternally preexistent primal forces and energies from God on infinite and eternal Paradise. This work was done by our Creator Father-Son Jesus Christ Michael.] Michael made ready for his first bestowal adventure about the time Urantia was taking on its present form, one billion years ago. His bestowals have occurred about one hundred and fifty million years apart, the last taking place on Urantia nineteen hundred years ago. [as of the time of this Revelation, circa A. D. 1935.] I will now proceed to unfold the nature and character of these bestowals as fully as my commission permits.
