Transcript of Lecture and Discussion of The Foreword by William Sadler, Jr.

   
   Paragraph Numbers: On | Off
Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version

TRANSCRIPTS OF A LECTURE AND DISCUSSION OF “THE FOREWORD”

By William Sadler, Jr.

Presented June 12, 1961

Well, I want to tell you something, this is, in my life, a very historic occasion and one of very deep gratification because in my entire experience with this Blue Book, this is the first time any group of human beings has ever asked to have the Foreword discussed.

Well honey, we’re glad to be the first !

I have taught the Foreword under various stages of compression. I’ve used a kind of an intellectual (Alimite) gun to force it down people. I’ve done a strip-tease with the Foreword. I’ve made it ridiculously simple and um... I’ve always had a captive audience, but you folks actually asked to talk about the Foreword, and, and um... well, all I can say is, in terms of the Bible, “ This hour has come”. I’d like to do this this, if I may, would you let me, would you let me try to give you a feeling for the Foreword first, and would you hold detailed questions until we’ve just taken an overview of the Foreword?

I would like to communicate to you my feeling for the intent which is behind the Foreword. The, the Foreword starts out with an apology, it says that our language isn’t very good (and indeed it isn’t) and it says, uh... we want to help you understand. You see, the secondary purpose of The Urantia Book is the illumination of the human mind. It’s primary purpose is the salvation of human souls, but the Book makes an intellectual appeal because the Book is in English, therefore it’s got to enter our consciousness through mind. The Foreword tips its hat, in two paragraphs, to the human desire to start from man and proceed to God. You’ll recall in one of the papers where they first talk about Trinity Teacher Sons, they tell why they wrote the Book the way they did, starting from God and proceeding outward and downward to man. They point out that if you start from man and go to God...uh...this might be a certain way of grasping fact, but you, the truth would elude you. You don’t start with consequences, you start with causes, you start with sources, and so they start this Book talking about God, but there are two paragraphs here (that start on page 1 at the bottom) in which very quickly accede to the human yearning to start from the simple and proceed to the complex. In the last two paragraphs on page 1 they very quickly start with, Our world and go right into Paradise and then they add a few comments:

“Your world is one of many similar planets which make up the local universe of Nebadon. This, with similar creations, makes up the Superuniverse of Orvonton, from whose capitol, Uversa, our commission hails. Orvonton is one of the seven evolutionary superuniverses of time and space which circle the never-beginning, never-ending creation of divine perfection- the central universe of Havona. At the heart of this eternal and central universe is the stationary Isle of Paradise, the geographic center of infinity and the dwelling place of the eternal God.”

I submit that’s quite a paragraph, isn’t it? In just a, in just 8 or 9 lines of type, they start here and take you swiftly into the center of all things. This is their concession to the human desire to start from the simple and go into the complex. I think it’s very significant that the Foreword starts with a discussion of deity and divinity.

Deity, they define, as a word which is larger than the word God, because God means a personal aspect of deity. Deity can be other-than personal, as well as personal.

The first half of section 1 in the Foreword is nothing more nor less than a discussion of how deity functions and they give us seven levels on which deity functions. These levels vary from the quiet to the active and they encompass all of the, all of the known, comprehensible functions of deity. Deity can be very quiet. Deity can also plan, and that means that there is a potential, a plan which will be fulfilled, a plan that will be consummated. Deity can be fraternal as in the case of Father, Son and Spirit. Deity creates and spreads itself out over creation. Deity engages in creativity in time as well as instantaneous creativity, because evolution is simply creativity in time and evolution simply means that creatures go in partnership with deity.

When a seraphim is created, she has nothing to say about her status, she simply is born as a full-grown seraphim, but human beings have everything to say about their status, as finaliters. The evolutionary process is no different than the creative process, except the act of creation is slowed down, broken into many stages and steps, and the creature has the possibility of going into a partnership with the Creator and of being co-creator of himself as he is to be. I think of the creative and the evolutionary aspects of deity as the outgoing aspects of deity and I think of the supreme and the ultimate aspects of deity as the in-gathering of the consequences of creation and evolution. When all finite evolution is summed up, it consolidates in Supreme Deity and this is a concept that’s quite new in The Urantia Book.

It’s quite foreign to orthodox Christian theology, it is not only foreign to western philosophy. The concept of a finite God is encountered in western philosophy, but usually when you encounter that concept, it is to the exclusion of an infinite God. Only in this Book do I find the two concepts associated. In the evolutionary Supreme Being, the Universal Father who inhabits eternity and pervades infinity, is escaping from the terrible limitation of absolutes. Through the Supreme Being, the Universal Father vicariously can have the experience of having an origin, of having a time of growth, of knowing what it is to struggle.

How could an infinite God know struggle, except through a finite expression of that infinite God? As you see, God’s love, His purpose, His energies, broadside throughout the finite level, in creation and evolution, then consider a bringing back together of all these things, and that is the supreme function of deity.

And in the same sense, on the super-finite level we have the ultimate function of deity, because what the Supreme is to the finite, the Ultimate is to the super-finite, to the absonite, not absolute, but more than finite. This paper, this section goes on to discuss briefly what is finite, what is absonite, what is absolute, and I think the simplest way of looking at it is to consider time and space. If we’re in time and space, we’re finite. Those beings who are above time and space, but understand time and space, deal with it, they’re absonite. An absolute being is timeless and spaceless.

I could think of a practical illustration there. Jesus’ personalized thought adjuster is a timeless being, a timeless entity, and you’ll recall that when the Master put the command of all celestial forces into the keeping of His personalized adjuster, this adjuster warned Him, he said...” now I’ll make sure that you don’t move about the planet, I understand space,” but he said “I want to warn You, if You want to do something which merely needs an abridgement of time, I can’t help you there, because I’m not conscious of time.”

This thought adjuster does not transcend time, this thought adjuster is timeless. Time has no meaning to the thought adjuster.

This section goes on to discuss divinity, and it points out that there are many different kinds of divinity, qualities of divinity, but that the one thing which is characteristic of divinity is it is the cement that holds all the acts of deity together. If something is related to deity in any way, shape or form, it manifests qualities of divinity. Elsewhere in the Papers, the comprehensible elements of divinity are defined as truth, beauty and goodness. We are told that these are unified in living personalities, as love, mercy and ministry.

Elsewhere we are told that God is love, we’re told that mercy is love applied, and that ministry is mercy in action. An effort is made in the second half of this first section to open up our thinking in terms of the quality of divinity, and for the first time you encounter the permutation of three. There are seven different aspects of divinity portrayed here, and if you’ll stop and consider, this is the same pattern you encounter in the Seven Master Spirits. They point out that divinity may be perfect, relative or imperfect, and then they let these associate, and you wind up with seven different combinations, and I think if you think of 3 in relation to 7, you’ll find this pattern more than once. Perfect in all respects, imperfect in none. Perfect in some respects, relative in other respects, imperfect in none. Perfect, relative, and imperfect, all in association. Relative perfection in all aspects, imperfect in none. Relative perfection in all aspects, imperfect in none. Relative and imperfect in association, imperfect in all aspects. I would say in human beings you have an association of the perfect and the imperfect. The thought adjuster would disclose perfection of divinity, and a human being would be a rather completely imperfect entity, wouldn’t he? You would have Alpha and Omega associated in man.

Having discussed deity and divinity, this Foreword then goes on to talk about God. When we consider God, we are considering an aspect of deity, the personal qualities of deity. How can we best understand that deity can be other than personal? Well, the Universal Father is the lord of gravity as well as the source of love. To use the word God loosely now, God has a different attitude toward the physical universe as compared with His sons and daughters in time and space. God could hardly love a spiral nebula, could He?

The physical, the material level of cosmic reality. They talk about force, energy, and power, and these are stages in the emergence of what we would recognize as physical reality. Force is the beginning, energy is a stage of emerging, and power is a stage of having emerged. This ties in with their later discussion starting with space potency, going on down through primordial force, (puissant) energy, gravity energy, and universe power. Ah, you might say that, uh, in terms of, in terms of liquid water (this is good symbolization), when you look up into the sky and you don’t see the water vapor up there at all, all you see is the blue sky with the sun shining, this would be like force. Now when it, when it turns cold and (you) see the clouds form, this would be like emergent energy and then when it starts to rain you’ve got universe power, now you can feel the, the wetness. Does, does that help? Force would be intangible, energy, you know you, you’d sense it, but you wouldn’t get your hands on it until it rained, then you could feel it.

They point out that mind always means somebody is doing something, there’s a ministration if there’s mind. Mind never is generated out of matter, mind is put in to matter. And they talk about pattern, which is a very, a very interesting bit of discussion here. They point out that pattern is a very real thing but it’s hard to put your hands on. Ah... we’re very unhappy if we have unfortunate pattern we call that being homely, being ugly. The whole beauty industry is built around the improvement of the human pattern.

Our forms are patterns. The spiral nebula is a pattern. A triangle is a pattern. And the reason that these patterns appear is because the universe is full of energy; material, spiritual, mindal. And the universe has personalities in it and personalities are always trying to order the manifestation of energy. So patterns are always appearing.

Elsewhere in the Papers, they speak of the forms of ascenders as being patterns which become increasingly responsive to the purpose and action of the inner personality, and I’ve long suspected that one of the main reasons we’ll have for trying to grow in grace on the Mansion Worlds is, if we are ugly on the inside we will jolly well look ugly on the outside, and the only “Helena Rubenstein” you can visit is the house-cleaning of your own soul, and when you begin to be good on the inside, you will begin to look beautiful on the outside. This is even true in (nil), as you write... as the hand of experience writes on your face, uh... the blank pages take on the aspect of your personality. I put it, in my words, we can’t avoid wrinkles, but we have a choice as to which kind, the frowning kind, or the smiling kind. You can choose which kind of wrinkles that you choose, that you want to wind up with.

The next 4 sections of the Foreword are a discussion of Experiential Deity, and here they use the word experiential in contrast to the word existential. Let’s see what the word experience means. It means that, it’s something that you learn by living through and because of this, you grow in wisdom, you grow in judgment, you grow in capacity. This is utterly foreign to the nature of God, isn’t it?

How could God grow by any technique, because God is infinite? How could God learn anything? God foresees. How could anything take the Father by surprise? Nothing could. God is beyond experience, isn’t He? His nature shuts Him off from all things experiential directly. He might grow, He might experience vicariously, in thought adjusters, but never directly, and as it is with the Father, so it is with the Son and the Spirit. These beings are existential deities, They are beyond experience. They are without beginning or ending of days. The Father’s infinity could hardly increase, could it? If He starts out as infinite, what can be added to it?

Now, the Supreme Being, the Sevenfold, the Ultimate, and God the Absolute are experiential deities. Let’s leave God the Sevenfold for the cogent. The Universal Father is engaged in augmenting deity, having started with 3, He is adding 3, and all of these expressions of deity are experiential. They have origins, historic origins. They have beginnings. They know growth. They know setbacks if you please.

As the Supreme Being is growing in time and space, I would say, the Lucifer Rebellion is like a cancer taking place within the Supreme, and if you’ll recall, they isolated the system of Satania much as white leucocytes would wall off an infection in the human body.

The Supreme Being is finite deity, is growing deity. The Supreme Being compensates God for the lack of experience of never having been finite. Through the Supreme, God can know what it would be like to have an origin and to grow. The Supreme Being compensates man for his inability ever really to understand an Infinite God. We’re told that God is the first truth and the last fact. We first feel God’s love and then we seek to understand Him, but that quest will never end.

There are only two beings who understand God and that’s the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit. They can because They have infinite comprehension capacity.

We will never understand God, but we will someday understand the Supreme Being, because He has an origin. He has a growth. He has a destiny. He can achieve completion, even as man has an origin, a growth, and can achieve the fulfillment of destiny in the Corps of the Finality. The Supreme Being is God as He can be understood by finite creatures. The Supreme Being is not the personalization of the Universal Father, But the Supreme Being is the finite equivalent of the personalization of the Paradise Trinity. The Trinity is not a person but when we want to say “What would the Trinity be like if the Trinity were a person and were finite?”, this is the Supreme Being. He who has seen the Supreme, has seen the equivalent of the finite personalization of the Paradise Trinity.

What we say about the Supreme Being in relation to the finite universe we could say about God the Ultimate in relation to the Master Universe. This is the personification of the Trinity in relation to the Master Universe and as comprehensible by beings that are more than finite, and some day that will include us.

I make this comparison between, the Papers make this comparison between Jesus and the Supreme Being. As Jesus is the bridge over which men moves from the human level to the finding of God, so the Supreme Being someday will be the bridge over which finite creatures will move to those levels that lie beyond the finite of creature experience, the absonite levels. God the Absolute. They don’t say much about God the Absolute, but I once paraphrased those 2 short paragraphs and it took, as I recall, 6 typewritten pages to paraphrase them and break them, down into what,...what these compact words mean. This statement, these statements about God the Absolute are like anchovies, the flavor is packed in very tight. You don’t eat anchovies in large quantities. You can dilute these paragraphs with much, much, English, and you still have intriguing concepts.

The trouble with God the Absolute is that God the Absolute is both experiential and existential and the chances are that our dealings with God the Absolute lie on beyond the whole Master Universe. I can see an end to the Supreme. I can see an end and destiny in the Ultimate, although it’s almost incomprehensible, but I can see only a beginning to God the Absolute, I can see no end.

* Italic text indicates another voice on the tape.

These are the beings that we encounter on the paradise ascent, starting with Jesus, going on up through the rulers of Orvonton, the Master Spirit of our Superuniverse and then successively, The Spirit, The Son and the Father. God the Sevenfold breaks down into three levels. I always think of the Sevenfold as in 3 principle subdivisions one, two, and three are the Supreme Creators, (They’re so defined in the Papers), They are not infinite, They’re sub-infinite, They’re sub-absolute, They’re the folks that are out here working in time and space. They’re the Master Spirits, The Ancients of Days, The Creator Sons, and we should include the Creative Spirits with the Creator Son. The last three are the 3 deities of Paradise, and in between the Supreme Being is growing. As the first 3 levels collaborate with the last 3 levels, this is the essence of the growth of the power of the Supreme Being, and as we participate in this adventure, we make our contribution.

I always think of it as when you... let’s say that a spiritual act... let’s compare it to a physical act because we can understand a physical act, and let the physical act consist of the lifting of a 10 pound, or 50 pound weight. What you get is the development of muscles, moral muscles perhaps, in the lifting of the weight, but as you lift the weight, your feet push down, don’t they? And that’s what the Supreme Being gets, is the downthrust of all our liftings. These repercuss in Him if they’re of spiritual character.

Section 11 is a very simple section dealing with the three Absolutes. Um... it’s simple, because you can read it without understanding any of it whatsoever. These three Absolutes are, in a sense, the potentials out of which future things are drawn, but that’s an over-simplification. These three Absolutes also function throughout all time and space, transcendent time and space, etceteras. Now, here’s what makes Their function very difficult to comprehend: Let’s consider a child in a given situation, he looks at a green apple and he has hunger and so he eats without any thought of the consequences of the bellyache. This is a, this is an... an act... this is a stimulus and response and a consequence, without judgment, without foresight, without anything. An adult looks at the green apple, it looks succulent, the adult forecasts the consequences of eating green apples and decides to pass it up because the adult doesn’t want the bellyache. The adult is not reacting to the stimulus of the present, is he? Yes, his salivary glands may react, his mouth may water, but his reaction has to do with future time, does it not? And with the consequences of his acts.

Michael, when He was here on earth as Jesus, lived a life from day to day, He looked ahead, He exhibited rare foresight. When He was pressed to do something prematurely, He said “But my has not yet come”, no one ever stampeded Him. He was always looking ahead, He was reacting to consequences and to effects, just as the adult looks ahead as compared with the child.

These Absolutes react in a timeless fashion. When this Absolute, when any Absolute reacts, this Absolute reacts in terms of the eternal past, the eternal present, and the eternal future. Therefore the reaction of an Absolute can never be understood within any frame this side of infinity. Does this make sense? The child couldn’t understand why the adult wouldn’t eat the green apple, the Twelve did not understand why Jesus did not do certain things, the universe administrators are just as mystified by the actions and transactions of the Three Absolutes. Nobody this side of the Paradise Deities, I think, comprehends what these Absolutes are doing because one of them mechanizes everything, another one... uh...activates everything, and the third One unifies mechanization and activation. That is the function of the universe.

They say don’t, don’t look upon these Absolutes as antecedent to God. They’re not. Don’t look upon these Absolutes as being independent of the Trinity. They’re not, although the Trinity deals with some of Them only indirectly, but deals with one of Them directly. When the Trinity... when the Paradise Trinity functions in a total sense, this is the function of the Deity Absolute, and through the Universal Absolute this causes responses in the Unqualified Absolute.

Over on page 15...

Bill?

Yes?

To go over this, one mechanizes, one activates, one...

The Unqualified Absolute mechanizes, the Deity Absolute activates, the Universal Absolute correlates these 2, unifies these 2. In the full function of the Universal Absolute, you might as well say there’s only one Absolute. Page 15 has some of the most difficult English in the Papers, and if we will forget what it says there, and try and get the flavor of the meaning, we can simply say this; The thing that makes it possible to have God and man in the same universe, is the Universal Absolute, who, like Sampson, holds up the temple and keeps the infinity of God from crushing the imperfection of man. The Universal Absolute’s function is to maintain the room in which things can be imperfect in the same universe with a perfect and omnipotent Deity. The Universal Absolute is the prop which God has set up under the room in which He is willing to tolerate imperfection in time. Were it not for the Universal Absolute the suggestion is, there wouldn’t be any room, God would fill all things. I will give you my personal opinion of the Universal Absolute. The Universal Absolute is a symbol indicating our inability to find the infinite, God as infinite.

This Foreword closes with a discussion of the Trinities, there are three of them. They point out that the Paradise Trinity is the existential Trinity, the other 2 are experiential Trinities. The Paradise Trinity has no origin. The other 2 Trinities have an historic origin, a time of coming into being, a time of coming into full function.

The Trinities happen, I think because of divinity. When God separates things, they’ve got to reunite in some way. When He achieves threefold personalization as Father, Son, and Spirit, the Trinity became inevitable. This separation could exist only if there were a unification, because deity is one. There could be a threefold personalization only if the three deities were unified in some fashion. This sets a pattern which is followed as reality is expressed on the finite level, all those who participate in this finite expression and perfecting of the finite, find themselves, in essence, reunified as a trinity, as the first experiential trinity, the Trinity Ultimate. Many beings are involved, but I visualize this as the union of the deity of three groups of beings; The Supreme Creators, The Transcendentlers (the Architects of the Master Universe) and The Supreme Being. This is not the union of over a million personalities, this is a union, again, of three deities. All of the Supreme Creators add up to some form of deity manifestation, this is, this is a consequence of Their success. It’s not difficult for me to visualize the deity expression of the Corps of the Architects of the Master Universe, and the union of these two with the Supreme Being, not as a person, but as deity, constitutes the First Experiential Trinity, The Trinity Ultimate, and this is the trinity which will supplement the acts of the Paradise Trinity in the exploration of the Master Universe and the consequence of the full development of the Master Universe is the formation of the Second Experiential Trinity (The Trinity Absolute), and the union of all three constitutes The Trinity of Trinities. And that’s what the Foreword means to me.

That was a wonderful explanation.

Thank you Bill, you sound good.

Crowd noise and conversation

The question put is, "How can the Universal Absolute be deity?". Well first of all, we know that It's defined as deity. On (15.1) 0:11.11, it’s spoken of, The Universal Absolute is spoken of as “the potential of the static-dynamic Deity functionally realizable...etc”, uh...” This incomprehensible aspect of Deity may be static, potential, and associative “, now those are the first three levels of Deity function. I want to go elsewhere for help because this is a rough one to try to answer.

Yes it is.

The ah....

(crowd conversation)... It’s back on 2 I think Bill.

Over on page 1154, we can get a little help. On 1154 they expand their discussion in the Foreword on the subject of reality, when they’re talking about the metamorphosis of the I AM, self distribution of the I AM. Uh...

Is that Deity and reality?

Yeah, 1154 paragraph 2 (1154.1) 105:2.2. It says “In following the chronological portrayal of the origins of reality, there must be a postulated theoretical moment of ‘first’ volitional expression and ‘first’ repercussional reaction within the I AM.” In other words, this is before the circle starts to separate. In our attempts to portray the genesis and generation of reality, this stage may be conceived as the self-differentiation of the Infinite One from the infinitude. The Infinite One being... uh ... pre-God, the infinitude being a pre-Unqualified Absolute. We’ve got the Infinite One and the infinitude, but the postulation of this dual relationship must always be expanded to a Triune concept by the recognition of the eternal continuum of the infinity, the I AM. To me, J.B., the Universal Absolute is a kind of a functional symbolization of the continuation of the Infinite, and when you start with that single circle of reality, this is Deity, this is not non-deity. Deity takes precedence over non-deity. Non-deity comes into existence only because Deity has withdrawn Itself. Question?

No, now I know.

That’s the best explanation I can give you. When you think of the 3 circles linked together, that middle circle symbolizes the original circle, and as such, would be Deity. The original circle is not non-deity.

No, that’s understandable.

You get non-deity because of the removal of something, this produces non-deity by subtraction, but they’re, they’re still united. Now you can either, you can express this in two ways. Let me draw you another concept symbol... [noise of drawing on blackboard] Here I’ve got 3 circles linked and I’ve got all my 3 links in the chain surrounded by one circle. We can’t find the large circle, but we can symbolize it by considering the middle circle of the 3-chain-link. That’s the best explanation I can offer you. I think this, I think if you could ever finalize God the Absolute, I think you’d have one Absolute, and then I think the Universal Absolute would become revealed as the Concealed Infinite, but I don’t think the Universal Absolute will ever cease to exist, because this would mean we would have reached the end of eternity and the outer edge of infinity, and those are self-contradictory statements.

Visualize the Trinity of Trinities, got 3 Trinities on the bottom level, you’ve got 3 Experiential Deities on the next level, but one of them is not complete, and as long as God the Absolute is incomplete, the third level is the Universal Absolute, but if you could ever complete God the Absolute, this would absorb all three Absolutes and would experientialize all three, and then I think on the third level you have the Infinite.

You confused me on a higher plane than I was before!

But at least you’re going up, James.

I ‘m still confused.

Well I, I offer this, I offer this with great humility but if, if, if this is not the explanation, then I have none to offer, it’s the best I can do. That’s a rough question.

Bill, have you ever described, I hope you have some time to describe the separation of the circles, this one and two?

Say that again Bert...

Have you ever described the separation of the circles when they’re separated, as one and a two? I mean and.

Yes, yes, yes...

Good!

The and itself is a reality. Or I’ve used the expression : one and another, and the, the and itself is a reality. Yes.

See, see J.B. didn’t ask “Why is the Universal Absolute?” he said “ Why is the Universal Absolute deity?”

Yes, I understand.

I can understand this association and unification factor, but I can’t hardly conceive how it can be Deity.

Well Frank can see by not being Deity, that Deity might be the answer.

Well you see free will moved clear out in the Deity Absolute when it left the Unqualified. Didn’t stop.

Right!

All right, I know that!

This, this Universal Absolute is, is pretty mysterious. The uh... I’ll, I’ll have my ignorance better unified when I do my 30th appendix to the story. I haven’t done it yet. Question?

Bill, I do have a question and this don’t [sic] relate to everything we’ve been working on. Uh... you said a while ago, (to reinforce my mind) but I don’t know why I’m asking. It had to do when,... the first separation from...uh... Absolute Deity. Which separated from the other? And that seems awfully important to me.

All right, the question is “ Which moved away from what?”.

Yes.

Uh, Deity moved.

Not the Unqualified?

No, the Unqualified Absolute was left behind, because the principle, the potential of, for volition is the essence of the concept of Deity.

Deity had to move, the other one couldn’t move...

The Unqualified Absolute is a reactor not an initiator. The Unqualified Absolute is the sneezer not the taker of snot.

That’s awful important, you know, I didn’t know why Bill, but I understand now.

I think it is important. The Unqualified Absolute what’s was left behind when Deity moved. Now please remember all of this is symbolization.

I’ll buy that.

You can, you can argue that this is simultaneous, you can argue it for sequence, and it just makes just as much sense to say that it’s happening today as that it ever did happen or that it will happen, or better still, it is an always happening. You see we’re using time language in eternity. Here, in reading these Papers, uh, make allowance for the by-and-large. Now, a statement like this might be made in the Papers: Human beings, the experience of human beings is characterized by birth and death. That’s a pretty reasonable statement, isn’t it? But it’s not 100% true because fusion might take the place of death, but that’s so nearly 100% true that it might be made in the Papers as virtually an absolute statement. It’s near absolute. We know of 2 people who’ve probably fused and there are undoubtably more, because in, in the Papers on thought adjusters, it says, “ Most of the adjusters who have taken their subjects to fusion were experienced on your world”. Well, that suggests to me more than 2. The only two I could put my finger on, would be Enoch and Elijah.

I don’t know how much to make doubt about it.

That’s right, Bert was pointing out that it says in the, last night the, it says the...uh, they’re talking about absonites, They’re beginningless and endless, but God the Ultimate has a beginning. It doesn’t say though, all absonites are beginningless or endless, it says the absonite level is characterized by this. Just as mortal life is characterized by birth and death. Had Jesus been an ordinary person, he would never have died, he’d of fused. About the time He was baptized in the Jordan, and they had to take His adjuster away from Him to stop fusion.

I’m glad you said that. I’ve never been able to understand why His adjuster stood away from Him.

Same reason, uh, Wilma, on a planet settled in light and life, when a human being is scheduled for fusion, you know they warn them ahead of time. He can plea for a stay of execution. He’s about halfway through an important job, and they grant him this privilege but then they detach the adjuster and he works just as Jesus did.

It worked out that, in the continuation of the growth of the soul which we are not cognizant of the growth, and you get on the ladder way up there and you have completed the soul’s growth to the point of fusion, but you’re not conscious of it.

No that’s right, but you can get a stay of execution. You see Jesus, Jesus’ life has certain parallels in worlds settled in light and life. A human being might go on and function 5 years as a post-fusion human being, and then, ah... report to the Morontia Temple, all his friends would be there like a commencement exercise, the adjuster would enter the soul and Whambo!, the pyrotechnics take place and off he is. And what a nice way to go.

Bill, we had a question on extra-divine, and uh... to explain your symbol of the 2 inches and the 1600 miles.

All right. The term extra-divine would refer, I suspect, to the Unqualified Absolute, is that correct? Let me check this usage. Page 14 paragraph 6, “ The Unqualified Absolute is non-personal, extradivine and undeified." Divinity is the characteristic unifying quality of Deity. This is not Deity, hence the Unqualified Absolute discloses no aspects of divinity.

OK... extra there, does not mean greater than?

No, outside of, outside of Divinity! Yes you could, well it sounds better to say extra-divine than un-divine. Un-divine could, has a connotation of evil. The Unqualified Absolute is not evil but is not in any way related to Divinity, per se. Now the function of the 3 Absolutes is related to Divinity because the mechanizing function of the Unqualified is unified by the Universal Absolute with the activating function of the Deity Absolute. So the total Absolute is not extra-divine, only this aspect of the Absolute. Page 4 paragraph 15, no, this is page 14...page 15 paragraph 6...paragraph 4. One...two...three...paragraph 4 page 15...one...two...three...four. I can’t find extra-divine in paragraph 4.

It’s over here on 14.

Maybe it’s in 6, let me try...no...I think that would be my interpretation of the word extra-divine...a much better choice than the word undivine.

It’s like five steps...

It’s not antagonistic to Divinity...

No, but it’s outside of...

But it’s outside of...

...and obviously does not connote greater than.

Yeah... see, this Absolute is not personal, has no Divinity, is not a Creator and you can’t understand it. You can’t use fact, truth, experience, revelation, philosophy or super-philosophy (absonity), to understand it. And that’s why I... I shudder when I glibly explain it. [Sound of Laughter] There’s a question here about...ah... 2 inches versus 1600 miles, where we’re talking about...that... that must be the firehouse, is that right?

Yeah, that’s the first floor.

Well I’m using space to symbolize time.

Say that again, I’m [words uncertain] good yardstick.

I’m using, I’m using space to symbolize time and since, uh... our time calculations are, uh... are even looser than our space calculations, cause we have no,... we have to assume a constant rate, uh... it doesn’t mean much, but I, what I’m saying here is this, ... in considering our firehouse...remember? we build a 3 story firehouse, we put a center pole down the middle where the firemen slide down, and the purpose of that center pole is to symbolize God who is contactable on any level of the firehouse, it’s the same God, the only thing that’s changed is you. We said if the first story is 2 inches high, then the second story is 1600 miles high and the third story has no roof, which is to say, if, creative expansion through 2 inches produces the Supreme Being, it takes 1600 miles to produce God the Ultimate, and you can start God the Absolute but there is no roof. You can’t finish God the Absolute, it’s a good illustration. God does not create universal brotherhood, universal brotherhood eventuates out of the fact of God’s Universal Fatherhood, you cannot have one without the other.

The word God has more than one meaning in these Papers, the word God is used with seven different meanings. We are familiar with the first three, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. We’re not familiar with God the Supreme, this is the emerging deity of the finite level of existence. This is evolutionary deity. This is God in time, not God in eternity. This is God in space, not God in infinity. God the Supreme is a consequence of the acts of infinite deity. God the Sevenfold is an association of deity. Our encounter with God the Sevenfold is in the bestowal of Jesus, a very real encounter. When Jesus said, “He who has seen He has seen the Father”, He spoke as God and for God and this is the truest illustration that we can apprehend concerning the function of God the Sevenfold. God the Sevenfold is God anywhere in time and space. God in action, in the imperfect evolutionary domains. To us, the only God that we can comprehend is in the human bestowal of Jesus, and this is God the Sevenfold in action. God reaching out from Paradise to fellowship any creature at any level of existence, even mortal creatures at the lowest level of existence. What God the Supreme is to the finite level, God the Ultimate is to the super-finite, the absonite level, that level which, (always like the ham in a sandwich, if the lower piece of bread is finite and the upper piece of bread is absolute and infinite, then the ham would be absonite, transcendental separating the finite from the absolute.) God the Absolute would be the final expression of deity. God the Absolute would be the final experiential or comprehensible expression of the Father, as the Eternal Son is the existential expression of the Father.

Existential meaning, that which comes into being by the inherent acts of God. Experiential meaning, that which creatures have had a hand in, hence, could understand. If God the Absolute could ever, ever appear in fact and in completion, then through God the Absolute we might understand God the Father as infinite. This tells me that God the Absolute will never complete His growth, because we will never understand, the Father is infinite, we’ll merely grow in that understanding.

The third section deals with the First Source and Center. I’m intrigued with the fact that there, they speak of the First, Second, and Third Sources and Centers, but there are only 2 sections in these Papers which use those captions. They discuss the First Source and Center, then I believe, over in Paper 9, they discuss the Third Source and Center. You see, God the Father and God the Spirit are quite alike, and They are both quite different from God the Son. The Father and the Spirit are personal, as is the Son, but They are also everything else besides being personal. They have many, other-than-personal characteristics. The Son is personal and only personal, that’s why the Son can’t fragment Himself as both the Father and the Spirit can. You can’t fragment a personality, and the Son can find nothing in His deity to fragment, because there is nothing in His deity which is not personal. He is the full, personal expression of God. The Father and the Spirit are equally personal, but They are also much that is, other-than-personal, hence, They can fragment Themselves, and so you have Father-fragments and you have Spirit-fragments. Some fragments, you will recall, come from the Creator Sons, not from the Eternal Son. Son fused mortals derive their spirit endowment not from the Eternal Son but from the Creator Son of their local universe.

In this third section we are, for the first time, introduced to the 7 absolutes of infinity. And we’re... we’re told about the relationship which the First Source and Center has to the 7 absolutes. And I think the easiest way to think about these 7 absolutes is to think of them in terms of matter, mind, and spirit.

The Second Source and Center is the source of spirit, the Third Source and Center is the source of mind, not that there’s not also spiritual ministry there.

The Paradise Source and Center, the Eternal Isle, is the source of all things material, and the controller of all things material. And then the easiest way to think of these 3 absolutes is, as the reservoirs out of which, the matter, the mind, and the spirit of the evolving present and the unexpressed future is coming. From the Unqualified Absolute come the evolving universes, From the Deity Absolute come the spirit beings which are being created and will be created, from the Universal Absolute, perchance, They draw upon from mind.

I’m not so sure about the last one but I’m pretty sure about the first 2. But I think it’s a good convenient way of looking at this. Example; When a local universe Mother-Spirit creates seraphim, they appear in what is it, unit formation? 100 and some odd thousand of them? It’s a large number of seraphim! They don’t come from nothing, they come from something. When a cloud appears in the sky, that cloud does not come from nothing, that cloud was there in the form of invisible water vapor before a change in temperature made it visible. These seraphim that are created were potential in the universe, before the Creative Spirit, by Her creative action, transformed them from a potential to an actual. The unborn of the next generation are potential in the germ plasm of the present generation of human beings, and if they weren’t potential, they jolly well couldn’t ever become actual, could they? This section makes an unqualified statement: “There are 7 Absolutes of Infinity, but the First Source and Center is primal in relation to total reality.”

This is not polytheism we’re studying, this is monotheism. There is only one Infinite Being, others share His infinity and His absoluteness, but none takes precedence over the First Source and Center.

God, the Universal Father, is the personality of the First Source and Center. Then they discuss how God is related to the universe, and we see that God is not directly related to the universe except in one aspect. God is related to creation, to the universes, through, His 6 associated Absolutes, except in one particular, He is the direct Father of every personality in existence. All personalities derive that quality of being from the Universal Father, and they are linked to the Father by the personality circuit. The other 6 Absolutes do not participate with the Father in this bestowal of personality, with one minor exception, the Infinite Spirit (the Third Source and Center) has the Father’s proxy (He’s the Father’s attorney-in-fact) and He can act for the Father, but again this is the delegation of creative power.

This section goes on to talk about reality, and they point out that the maximum reality which we can understand is a finite God, and let’s face it, we want God to have a beginning, don’t we? A beginning-less God is really beyond our comprehension. The only reason we accept an un-beginning God is because it’s ridiculous to have a beginning, because if He has a beginning, who’s His father? Who’s His grandfather? Who’s His great-grandfather? We have the choice between an uncaused cause or an endless series. Do you see that? And the endless series of course is ridiculous. The Greeks tried it, back at Zeus, they had Cronus and back of him they had someone else, but eventually you give up and you simply start with the Uncaused Cause. This section goes on to point out that we need, conceptually we need, a beginning, and though there never was a beginning, they’re gonna give us one, in concept, but they warn us this is not reality.

To God, to deity, prior to any self distribution, they give the name, the I AM , and they say,” This is a philosophic concept, this is not a reality”.

And the most helpful thing I can suggest to you, to deal with that, is this; We use the number 0 in all our mathematics but you have never seen nothing, have you? You can see one of something, or one and a half or two, but you’ve never seen a zero of anything, have you? And yet we think in terms and it’s a, it’s a most convenient concept in mathematics. Zero is a valid concept but zero is not a factual reality, only a concept of reality. Are you with me? The term, I AM, is just a valuable a thinking tool as the term zero but neither are factual. Nevertheless, they qualify, they say,” Now look, the I AM may be a theoretical concept in the philosophic concession, but the Infinite is not, the Universal Father is the Infinite.”

I think of the term First Source and Center as this; when you get down to the level of the Seven Absolutes and you want to isolate out the Infinite, it is the First Source and Center. This is the Infinite as manifest on the level of the Seven Absolutes. Just as when you want to say, “ What is the personality of the First Source and Center?” the answer is God. What name do we give to that personality?... The Universal Father. That is the name of our choosing. How could He have a name? He’s nameless.

In shorthand here, they tell you how the I AM distributed Himself. They simply tell you, and this again, these are valid concepts but these are not factual realities. They simply say that... I’m gonna use the word God to describe (pre-God) because it’s a simpler way of telling the story, they simply say that God separated Himself from total reality and if He hadn’t done that there would have been no room in which anything could take place because how would you squeeze something in where God filled all things?

God, as it were, contracted Himself and He can do this because He has will. What He contracted Himself into is the essence of deity, at the heart of which is will, and what He left behind is the essence of non-deity, non-will.

One of the greatest criticisms I ever read of the Book of Genesis was written by a Zoroastrian theologian, uh...about 250 A.D., it’s in the (Palavi) Texts, and this Zoroastrian, in criticizing Genesis says,” God was not alone, because when God commanded “Let there be light!”, in order for that command to have effect, there must also have been present an Obeyer of Commands” and I borrow that term from the old Zoroastrian theologian. The Unqualified Absolute is the obeyer of commands, when deity takes snuff, the Unqualified Absolute sneezes.

Now, when God separates Himself from that which is not deity, He still Himself to that which is not deity. This linkage is the function of the Universal Absolute, the conjoiner of the non-deity Absolute from the Deity Absolute, and I think 3 links, linked together, is an excellent symbol for that relationship. God still fills all deity, and I think of God as contracting within deity while at the same time He expands to continue to fill all deity. I think of God as separating Himself from the Son, of conjoining Himself with the Son, of constituting the Trinity, as a thing that happened simultaneously, so that instead of one of these circles, you know the 3 circles, just being full of God, this circle is now a tri-concentric circle, it is full of the Trinity, and in so doing, God achieves companionship. He separates Himself from absolute personality, and in so doing He becomes the Father of the Absolute Person, who thereby becomes His Son, and if He can become Father of the Absolute Person. He can become Father of any person. He ceases to be the Absolute Person but becomes the Universal Father of the Absolute Person and of all other persons. At the same time that He does this, when He expresses Himself absolutely as a person, He expresses Himself absolutely as a non-person, and this is the origin of the Isle of Paradise, or to anthropomorphize it, Paradise is the absolute machine which God built for the same reason that men build machines, to perform repetitive acts.

The physical governing of the physical universes is a repetitive act, and God devised a flawless machine to do this job for Him. Why should He personally attend to it when a machine, an absolute machine, can do the job? They tell us that reality, in section 4 is... they’re trying to point out that all is not spirit. These Papers make some startling statements, they say for example, “God is spirit but Paradise is not.” They point out that our direction God-ward is spirit-ward, so that as we consider matter, mind, and spirit, the spiritual is the more real to us because our growth towards reality follows a spiritual route. This is truth, this is not however, fact.

Energy, physical energy is just as real as spiritual energy, but it doesn’t have as much meaning or as much value to human beings. They point out here that reality can be deified or not deified.

This planet is hardly deified reality, is it? But finaliters have partaken of divinity and are a part of deified reality, creature-parts of deified reality. They go on to point out that things may be either actual or potential. We are actual people, children yet un-born are potential people, are they not? And of course you can have something in between.

A good illustration of something which is neither actual nor potential, the brotherhood of man. Is it real? Well, read any newspaper and you can determine that it’s not really here, is it? It is a becoming reality, isn’t it? It’s in the gray area, the zone of becoming. Are human beings real? Yes and no. Until they’ve fused with their thought adjusters, they’re not truly real in the universe, are they? We’re simply becoming citizens of the universe. Is a child an adult? Well, no, and yet he’s not, not an adult, he’s a becoming adult, or have you coped with teenagers?

This section closes with a discussion of not-spirit reality. It discusses the Isle of Paradise, where they point out that Paradise is an absolute reality derived from deity, but it is not deity.

And I think, I think the, the best way of looking at Paradise is, it is the Absolute Machine which God built. And we can understand that, because we build machines to do jobs. Somewhere in here, it’s not this particular context, it says. “Paradise is not conscious as man could ever understand the meaning of such a term.” Paradise, is some way, is a knowing reality. Paradise is not mind-less, but it does not have mind as we could ever understand the meaning of that word. You think of Paradise, you should think of Paradise in two ways. Paradise is a place, the dwelling place of God, at the center of all things. It is our, it is our final destination in our quest for God. On Paradise we will find God, and figuratively speaking, we shall stand before Him, face-to-face.

Paradise also has a function in the universes. As the Son draws all things spiritual, as the Third Person draws all things intellectual, so Paradise draws all things material.

Paradise is the central governing power of the Material Universe of Universes. Section 5 talks about personality realities and it points out that personality comes from God and that all, all reality that is linked with personality is associable. Pre-personal fragments, super-personal beings, are all contactable and associable with personality and personal beings. This is a part of deity reality, in contrast to the not-personal which can never be associated with a person. Man has no fellowship with a rock but man can have fellowship with an adjuster, a seraphim, or a transcendentaler, given enough time to have contact with transcendentalers, and they would be super-personal beings.

They sum up, at the end of this section, the functioning entity of a human being; body, mind, spirit, and soul. The body, our life mechanism. The mind, which we think with and confuse ourselves with. The spirit, which invades the mind, just as sperm invades the womb, and the soul is the embryo that comes into origin as a result of that cosmic conception. The human mind is the material womb of the soul. The spirit that comes from the Father is the invader, and when that invasion takes place, in about the 5th year of mortal life, something new begins to grow, and this is the embryonic soul that evolves within the womb of the mind, and this is the soul which has the capacity to survive death.

And they point out that personality is none of these things, that personality is not matter, not mind, not spirit. Personality is a fourth reality in the cosmos. Personality is that which comes from God the Father, not the Son, not the Spirit, unless the Spirit acts for the Father.

Then they define Morontia, because the soul is Morontia, the soul is neither matter nor spirit. And the best definition I know of Morontia is; it is a fabric, the(warp) of which is physical, the(woof) of which is spiritual.

Uh, uh, you said it wrong there...

Well it doesn’t make any difference... because the soul is Morontia, one goes one way, and one, the other.

I was lookin at it, I wouldn’t be that smart, I was look in at it.

Or you might say that matter and spirit will not mix. They don’t ordinarily, any more than oil and water will mix, but in the presence of soap, oil and water will emulsify. Morontia is an emulsification of the oil of matter and the water of spirit.

Section 6 deals, in a sense, as a continuation of their discussion of Paradise. As they have talked about personality realities in section 5, they talk about non-personal realities in section 6. They try to define some terms they're going to use in talking about this would require an exhaustion of infinity and the completion of eternity. Now in terms of time calculation and agility of...abba, you brought the baby,....and I'll give it to you in time...

END OF TAPE

Foundation Info

Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version

Urantia Foundation, 533 W. Diversey Parkway, Chicago, IL 60614, USA
Tel: +1-773-525-3319; Fax: +1-773-525-7739
© Urantia Foundation. All rights reserved