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One of the very great statements made in the Urantia papers is found in paper twelve. In the universe of universes, quote, "God is spirit; but Paradise is not."

Here we touch upon one of the essential differences between the metaphysics, or cosmology, of the Urantia papers and many other religions. I believe in three forms of reality: material, mindal, and spiritual. I believe there are three sets of laws (I'm ignoring personality for the moment), and I believe that if you want to produce spiritual results, you apply one set. If you want to produce a material effect, I think praying is strictly for the birds. Set up a material cause. And of course you have the intervening zone of intellectual reality which touches on both matter and spirit. You find in Hinduism, they tend to believe in one form of energy, in just one reality. You have Brahman, and you have maya. In other words, you either are dealing with the absolute, or you are dealing with an illusion. And this is true in most religions which touch upon pantheism. The Urantia Book presents not only three forms of energy operating under three distinctly separate types of law, the Urantia Book presents the concept of reality which is both Deified and undeified--not anti-deity, but non-deity.

As we look at these papers, we're going to observe that there are two absolute realities which are non-deity. Paradise is not Deity, neither is the Unqualified Absolute. Neither are non-responsive to Deity, but neither is Deity. Paradise is a lot easier to comprehend than the Unqualified Absolute. I think the simplest definition of Paradise is: Paradise is a machine which God built for the same reason that men build machines. In other words, a part of the control of this universe is mechanistic. And why should God be personally concerned with something which a machine can handle? We have the same reaction; we should understand that. Where you have a repetitive act of a mechanical nature, what do you want to do?

We want to build a machine. It's characteristic of personality. And one of the reasons is because God himself set this pattern when he designed the absolute machine. The material heart of the material cosmos is a material reality, not a spiritual reality. In a human being, I think you have the most comprehensible presentation of the interaction of three kinds of reality. Matter, mind, and spirit. Not human spirit, but endowed spirit. Here we have an interassociation of the three functioning realities in the finite universes. Plus a fourth--personality. Which is one of the difficult concepts to get in the Urantia papers. The Urantia papers put some new twists on several words. Personality is one. Space is another.

We'll spend some time talking about space, because these papers present space as a positive reality, not just a negative reality. These papers present personality as something quite different from your character, your temperament; we even use personality as a crude synonym for sex appeal. You know? Or social charm. But personality is presented in these papers as the fourth reality-- something which is not matter, not mind, and not spirit, and which differs in a way from matter, mind, and spirit, because matter, mind, and spirit--while they are qualitatively different--they exist in terms of quantity. They respond to gravity. And you can measure the degree of response, so that you can speak, not only of material mass, but intellectual mass, and spiritual mass. Personality has quality, but no quantity. There is no mass to personality. And while we're at it, let's talk a little about that. I think that most helpful way of looking at personality is to think of an abstract color. Think of yellow. You all can conceptualize yellow, can't you? But did you ever see yellow, except in relation to some object? No. Now you've got a feeling for what personality is.

You can conceptualize, you can conceive of personality in the abstract, but you will never see a personality except it is associated with one or more of the active energies in time and space. These papers can talk about personality in the abstract, but personality never functions unless it is associated with a living energy system. If you take personality away from living energy, you have something which is real, but is wholly non-functional. And I believe is non-detectable on sub-deity levels. I think God knows it's there, but I don't think we do. I think some of his deputies may know where it is, but I don't think creatures do. Personality is, to a living energy system, in a way, what a color is to an object. It unifies the whole object. When it's there, it dominates. You have some subtle relationships as we get into these three energies.

A spiritual being is not a personality simply by virtue of being a spiritual being. This is interesting. A spirit entity can be very real, and yet be other than personal. If a spiritual being is a personality, it is because the Father has added personality to spiritual reality. And in a way, this illustrates the primacy of the Father in relation to the Son, who is the active center of spiritual reality. How does spirit relate to mind? Do you have to endow a spiritual being with mind to enable it to think? The answer is no. Spirit is minded, without mind. Illustrating the primacy of the Son in relation to the Conjoint Creator. Spirit is antecedent to mind, but not to personality. Isn't that interesting?

Is a minded being essentially spiritual? The answer is no. Any more than a spiritual being is necessarily personal. I think these are interesting relationships, illustrating the functional relationships of the three Deities, and their primacy in relation to each other. The unrevealed inhabitants of the worlds of the Eternal Son are not personalities. They're created by the Eternal Son. They're spiritual beings. We don't know anything about them, except we know they're not personal. A Thought Adjuster is a spiritual reality, but not a personality, unless God chooses to personalize that Thought Adjuster. An intelligent being may not be spiritual. I don't think an Associate Power Director is a spiritual being at all, but I'm sure an Associate Power Director is an exquisitely intelligent being.

I suspect such beings will be our instructors when we graduate from the local universe and become first stage spirits. And instead of studying God, we study physics, and astronomy, and the physical constitution of the universe of universes. And that's not as paradoxical as it might seem. I think maybe if you get outside of matter, then you can really understand matter. You can look at it from an exterior perspective. Those of you who have developed at-home-ness in a foreign language know how much you can appreciate English because you can think from a position exterior to the English language. I mean when you stop translating, this becomes a second language. It's just like if you leave this country, you have a wonderful basis of comparison and a new ability to appreciate what we have here. And also what they have there.

We really can understand only one of the discussed levels of Deity function--the personal. We're personalities. Hence we can deal with God as a Father of personalities. This makes sense to us because the fatherhood relationship is one which we either observe or have experienced or have both observed and experienced. Parenthood is an easy thing for reproducing creatures to comprehend. But is the First Source and Center the Father of a Thought Adjuster? Oh, yes, you can use poetic license and use the word Father there, but actually he's not, is he?

Audience: He's a part of him--the practical part of him.

What is it? We have no word for it. What is the relationship of a source to a fragment? You can be father only to a son. God is Father to a Personalized Adjuster, co-Father. The mortal contributors to the Adjuster's character are also parental there, but what is the word you use to describe the relationship of the First Source and Center to a fragment of himself that is not a son? We have no word. Neither do we have a word adequate to express God's relationship to an eventuated being, for God is functioning in a superpersonal sense. What does the word superpersonal mean? Nothing, absolutely nothing. You cannot grasp it, except you know it's not personality. It's not less than personality, but more than personality. But you see, the word personality is a maximum word in our experiential comprehension.

We know of nothing beyond personality. We can conceive of a sub-personal being as an animal. We've experience here. But that's not analogous to the prepersonal level of the Universal Father. A Thought Adjuster is not an animal. Neither can we understand what a superpersonal being is, because we're working up here on the second story of Undivided Deity, Incorporated. And when they say that God, as a superperson eventuates beings, what does that mean? Well, they've taken an English word and put an odd twist on it. They might just as well say he gloops them. You know what I mean? That's an arbitrary word. And it would be just as meaningful. They are not created; but how do they come into being? Who knows? It's by a different technique.

Fragmentation I can visualize as the tearing off of a piece--but eventuation is completely beyond me. I just know it's not creation. You see, we're getting into trouble as we deal with levels, and also this whole darn thing is complicated by the difference between a time reality and an eternity reality. I don't understand eternity; I just know it's not time. When they describe eternity events in these papers, they often use the present tense. And it makes just as much sense to put them in the present tense as it would the past tense. They do not say the God of Action functioned, and the dead vaults of space were astir; they say the God of Action functions, and the dead vaults of space are astir. It's no more distortion to say that this is happening in the present moment as it would be to say that it happened at any past moment in time, because it never happened in any past moment in time.

I would like each one of you to visualize this assignment: For whatever reason, you have been commissioned by some bureau in the American State Department, and it is your job to go to Africa. You can have textbooks with you, you can carry quite a lot of baggage. And it is your job to go into the still remaining darker portions of Africa, and you are going to write, dictate, a series of presentations of the American way of life to Bantu tribesmen living in the Stone Age of culture. And interpreters have been provided--you don't know Bantu--interpreters have been provided who are fluent in Bantu and who have a complete grasp of English as well.

And in the course of your discussions, you have gotten to the chapter which deals with the functioning of the New York Stock Exchange in relation to American economy. And you are thinking how do you present the relationship between common stocks, cumulative and noncumulative preferred, debentures, secured debentures, the relationship between these liens against the earnings of a holding company, and similar obligations issued by subsidiary companies, which have a prior claim to the earnings of subsidiaries, which eventually will be funneled as dividends into the holding company; and the relationship of the income tax structure to the interest and dividends ultimately received by the bondholders and stockholders of this corporation; and the relationship of all this as it pertains to the American economy in terms of the rise and fall of the price of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange.

Audience: Laughter.

Audience: Their language wouldn't--

And so you start out. And the interpreter says, "Sorry, in Bantu, no word for common stock." And little by little, you begin to adjust your thinking. And the chances are, that what you wind up with, is a description of something very much like a State Fair, where produce is brought to a given spot, and bartered and exchanged. And you either describe it this way, or you skip the story of the New York Stock Exchange. Look. There's a tremendous gap between the verbal concepts in primitive Bantu and mid-Twentieth century English. But you can translate from English into Bantu; it can be done. The language of Uversa is not translatable into English under any circumstances. There is no overlap. The gap between Uversa and English is tremendously greater than the gap between English and Bantu. You have to go from Uversa to the tongue of Salvington; and even then, you can't translate into English. But from Salvington, you can go to the tongue of Satania, and now, you can translate into English. So, how many times do you suppose the interpreter said to the Divine Counselor, "But there is no word for this in English."

And little by little, the Divine Counselor compromised his concept, permitted his story to be attenuated, finally, in certain places, said, "Well, we just won't talk about this at all, because the distortion is too great. I can't convey truth at all. Fact I'll sacrifice--" (Break in tape) "--We're fully cognizant of the difficulties of our assignment. We recognize the impossibility of fully translating the language of the concepts of divinity and eternity into the symbols of the language of the finite concepts of the mortal mind." And then they go on to say, we're very hopeful that your Thought Adjusters and the Spirit of Truth will help us in this matter.

And again, I think of the Archangel who--I'm sure this Archangel has a high aesthetic motivation, because he was selected to write the paper on the celestial artisans, and he's talking about the affairs of the local universe, not the affairs of Orvonton or Havona. And he goes on to say, "But I almost despair of being able to convey to the material mind the nature of the work of the celestial artisans. I am under the necessity of constantly perverting thought and distorting language in an effort to unfold to the mortal mind the reality of these morontia transactions and near-spirit phenomena."

Not spiritual realities, morontia realities. "Your comprehension is incapable of grasping, and your language is inadequate for conveying, the meaning, value, and relationship of these semispirit activities. And I proceed with this effort to enlighten the human mind concerning these realities with the full understanding of the utter impossibility of my being very successful in such an undertaking." "I can do no more than to attempt to sketch a crude parallelism between mortal material activities and the manifold functions of the celestial artisans. If the Urantia races were more advanced in art and other cultural accomplishments, then I could go that much farther in an effort to project the human mind from the things of matter to those of morontia."

Not spirit, morontia. "Every attempt on my part to explain the work of spirit embellishment would only recall to material minds your own pitiful but worthy efforts to do these things on your world of mind and matter." In regard to the harmony workers, "These artists are not concerned with music, painting, or anything similar, as you might be led to surmise." The translator just said, no word in Bantu for common stock. "They are occupied with the manipulation and organization of specialized forces and energies which are present in the spirit world, but which are not recognized by mortals."

Sorry, these people color blind. No use describing red, yellow, and blue. No words in their language. "If I had the least possible basis for comparison, I would attempt to portray this unique field of spirit achievement, but I despair--there is no hope of conveying to mortal minds this sphere of celestial artistry." Ensembles of dancing undoubtedly represent a crude and grotesque attempt of material creatures to approach the celestial harmony of being placement and personality arrangement. The other five forms of morontia melody are unrecognized by the sensory mechanisms of material bodies. Fellow Bantu, tribesmen, fellow savages, fellow ignoramuses, let's be a little charitable as we go through this and remember that their job of describing Paradise monota to us is infinitely more difficult than would be our job of describing Twentieth century Western civilization to a stone age tribe anywhere in their language. But I think we can develop some sympathy for these folks.

And they've got to work in English, don't they? And so they introduce--they take words like eventuate, and put new meanings in them. Occasionally they give us arbitrary words, like absonite, like morontia. They take the word personality and put a new twist on it. They take our word space and add new properties to it. In other words, they actually expand our language a little bit in the process of trying to introduce their concepts into Bantu. I think that if we can get a feel for the seven levels of the total function of Deity, it's going to be very interesting to us, and it's going to open up to us a feel for Deity, a feel for cosmic growth, and a feel for creature destiny, that we can hardly get anywhere else. I regard this statement of the seven levels of Deity function as one of the most basic to the comprehension to the Urantia Book.

This is not basic to human salvation. The love of God is basic to that. But to comprehension, this is basic. First of all, I wish you'd kind of get these words in mind; they're real short words--static, potential, associative, creative, evolutional, supreme, and ultimate. Let's emphasize the simultaneity of these things. All of these things are happening all the time, always have happened since the beginning of things. Let's analyze what one of these words mean. Well, first of all--I'm not going to use the text, you can read that--something that's static just is, isn't it? And I think the best illustration of the static nature of Deity is the concept of I AM. I AM what I AM. I AM that I AM. God is. Deity is. And Deity is unchanging. And in many senses, Deity continues to be unchanging, unaltered by the events of time. Impervious, even, to the cycles of eternity.

We folks are alive today. It's a dead cinch that a thousand years from now, none of us will be here, right? And if we don't blow up this planet, there will be people here, correct? These people are potential, aren't they? They're not here, but obviously, they're possible. A thousand years ago, we weren't here, but we were potential, or we couldn't be here now, right? In a certain sense, a seed is the potential of a plant. One of the cutest statements I ever read was in an analysis of genetics, and it said, a hen is an egg's way of making another egg. When I think of static Deity, I think of a fried egg. This is the I AM. Potentials have not yet differentiated from actuals. As the papers describe it, this is the hypothetical static moment of eternity. That's the language used in the cross-reference I gave you. But the papers do not validate what (can't understand tape) and metaphysicians call monism, which is not a fried egg, but a scrambled egg.

There's a big difference. In a scrambled egg, you've got just a oneness, right? But in a fried egg, you've got a nucleus and a cytoplasm. The nucleus is the yellow part; the cytoplasm is the white. Always, even in a hypothetical static moment, in the beginning of beginnings--before the beginning of beginnings--there was always the possibility for self will. When you differentiate potentials from actuals--again, I've got to have real, real childlike simple symbols to get 'em--you know what happened? The yolk moved out away from the white. How many of you have separated yolks and whites? The yolk moved away from the white. This is the creation, eventuation, appearance, of possibilities. Something could happen. And, of course, the minute the yolk moved away from the white, you don't have two realities, you have three realities. You have the white, you have the yolk, then you have the relationship between the white and the yolk. Doesn't the fried egg help? I mean you just can't be afraid of a concept of a fried egg, can you?

Audience: Laughter. (Break in tape) --moved away from the static situation. In so moving, the yolk demonstrated volition, and also qualified itself. It took up a new position. The white never moved, did it? And was never qualified. Hence, it's unqualified. And since we are dealing with absolute realities, here, I think, is the genetic derivation of the term Unqualified Absolute. Unqualified because it's never moved. And at this point, the white became an it, because the personal potentials were in the yolk. When you take the yolk away from the white, you rout it of all Deity and personality qualities. Henceforth, the Unqualified is it, not he. The yolk--what name shall we give the yolk? I like the term Qualified Absolute. It's used in the papers, rarely. And what do we name the relationship between the white and the yolk? The papers give us a name, the Universal Absolute, whose function it is to interrelate the tensions and relationships between the Qualified Absolute and the Unqualified Absolute. And here is the beginning of the separation of Deity and non-Deity. The Unqualified Absolute is static reality minus all that is Deity. The Qualified Absolute contains within itself the seeds of Deity manifestation. Volition is inherent in the yolk. Response, inherent in the white, the cytoplasm. The Unqualified Absolute.

You know, one of the shrewdest criticisms of the Book of Genesis was written by an old Zoroastrian theologian. It's in the Pehlevi texts. And this old Persian, Zoroastrian, pre-Mohammedan of course, is saying, this story of creation is for the birds. God was not alone, because when he commanded something happen, this means that there was also present an obeyer of commands. How 'bout that? I think that's a pretty good definition of the Unqualified Absolute. When Deity speaks with an absolute voice, the commands are obeyed by the Unqualified Absolute.

Or, putting it this way, when total Deity takes snuff, the Unqualified Absolute sneezes. The next stage of development is that of associative. From here on, changes are going to take place in the yolk, not in the white. The white is essentially changeless, only responsive to the yolk. What's happening here? Well, I think we are trying to put together the story of the great prison break. This is the Universal Father escaping from the fetters of infinity and the limitations of absoluteness. Look, if God is all and fills all, there's no room for us, is there? There's no room for adventure. There's no room for change. If infinity is totally filled by the Infinite One, then there's no room for any other one, is there? If you've got a pitcher that's full of water, can you put water in the pitcher? The answer is no.

As Lao-Tze says in the Tao te Ching, the great value of a vessel is it's emptiness. So that it can be filled. And what God is trying to do is produce some emptiness, so that other than God may live. At this point, the principle of God is in this yolk, the Qualified Absolute. And at this point, God is the Absolute Personality. As the Absolute Personality, God suffers from awful limitations. He's everything. How does he create emptiness? Here's how he does it. And this, in crude language, is precisely what is described in the reference I've given you. Let's visualize God as wearing a coat. You know, fried eggs and coats and things like that--these are not frightening ideas. Let that coat symbolize the Absolute Personality. What happened? God took his coat off. He moved away from the Absolute Personality. And in so moving, he became Father of the Absolute Personality, who thus became the Eternal Son.

The Universal Father is not the Absolute Personality. The papers are very clear on this point. The Eternal Son is the Absolute Personality. In this transaction, God possessed himself of something new--Father personality. And if he could be Father of the Absolute Personality, he could be Father of any personality. And in this transaction, he escaped from the terrible limitations of absoluteness. If you will study the papers on the Eternal Son--I'll give you your cross-references here. "Limitations of the Eternal Son." (281) The Eternal Son cannot be father to any being in his own name and right. The Eternal Son cannot fragment his nature. You cannot fragment personality.

One of its prime properties is unity. You can't break the unity of personality. How then, can the Father fragment? Ah! Because he's not only a person, he's everything else, too. And as a pre-person, he can fragment. The Father can't fragment his personal nature any more than the Son can, but he has a prepersonal nature which he can fragment. This is why the Eternal Son becomes forever a revelation of the Universal Father. All personalities are fashioned after the nature of the Eternal Son. And stop and think: this is automatically true, because all personalities are also sons, are they not? This, I think, is the derivation of the third level of total Deity function, associative.

It's not only associative as between Deity and non-Deity, it is associative as between the Father and his now-appearing son, the Absolute Personality. I think the principle that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction is sound. When the Father revealed himself in the Eternal Son, at the same time he revealed himself in a non-spiritual, non-Deity manner. At the same time that he took off his coat, he built a machine. He built Paradise. Paradise is a revelation of the non-Deity aspects of the First Source and Center, just as the Eternal Son is the full revelation of the personal, spiritual aspects of God the Father. God is not Father of Paradise; God is source of Paradise. He's Father of the Eternal Son. The First Source and Center is related to the physical universe, not by the quality of love, but by the majesty of physical law. His relationship to the personal universe is something quite different. Do you have this picture now?

We have the Father and Son present on Paradise. And they sustain a relationship to the Unqualified Absolute through the Universal Absolute. I have a name for this moment. I like to call it the zero universe age. I want to talk to you about universe ages as we go through the Foreword. They're quite related to this story. You'll recall that we're living in the second universe age, aren't we? It's the age of the superuniverses. Our universe age began--I would pick as a likely date, the date of the creation of the twenty one Ancients of Days. The papers tell us this is the first recorded event in history. Time history, as we know it, begins with the creation of the twenty one Ancients of Days. This happened a finite number of years ago. It can be written out in numbers. It's probably a hell of a big number, but it's a comprehensible number. That event ended the preceding universe age, didn't it? The age of Havona. And began the present universe age. We're living in the second universe age. The age of Havona was the first universe age.

What we're talking about now is the zero universe age. Zero is not a reality, but it's a very valuable concept, isn't it? This is what the papers refer to, I would say, as the dawn of eternity. Zero is not real. It's just conceptually valuable. Well, we've reached the zero universe age. And I would like, again, to take very careful inventory of what we have in this zero universe age. We have some potentials here. We've got the Unqualified Absolute. We still have the Qualified Absolute. We have the Universal Absolute. We have, in terms of actuality, three realities. We have two existential Deities, and a power base for operations. I visualize at this moment the Father and the Son alone on Paradise. And what do they do? They move into the fourth level of Deity function. They create. And how do they create? They engage in an act of total trinitization. And this act has the following results:

1. The appearance of their Deity equal.
2. The formation of the original Trinity.
3. The appearance of the central universe and
4. The potential appearance of all future material creation.

You see--this is a subtle one--all of the matter of all creation has come from Paradise. All of the stuff of the yet-to-be created nebulae of the future came from Paradise. I like to consider the relationship of two actual and one theoretical universe ages--zero, one, and two. Or, the zero age, the Havona age, and the present age of the Grand Universe. Back in the zero age, we don't have the complete function of Deity, do we? We have the static function, we have the potential function, and we don't truly have the associative function, do we? At best, it's foreshadowed. Now, when we get our first actual universe age, the Age of Havona, we have two new Deity levels in operation.

We have the full expression of the associative level in terms of existential Deity. This is the Paradise Trinity. And we have the fourth level, the creative level. Now, does this mean the first two levels stop functioning? The answer is no. They go right on into the age of Havona. You still have static reality, potential reality, associative Deity, and creative Deity. And so it is when the age of Havona gives way to the age of the Grand Universe, or the seven superuniverses as dependent on Havona. This is the second universe age; this is the age in which we are now living.

The first four levels of the function of total Deity continue, and we add a fifth. And the fifth level of Deity function is evolutional. What's the difference between creative and evolutional? Audience: Time. Plus creature participation. Is a Havona native a partner with Deity in determining his status as a Havona native? Audience: No. No. He is what he is because the Gods made him that way, right? A mortal ascender, however, is an increasingly conscious partner with God in the evolution of his status as a finaliter. Right? Here is the big difference between creation and evolution. And the evolutionary concept is the big new thing as I see it, that appears in the second universe age. And it doesn't mean that any preceding thing stops operating. It merely means a new thing is added. We still have two levels of Deity function, don't we? Supreme and Ultimate. What gives there? Are they operative now? No, not in any completed sense of the word. When will Deity function on the Supreme level? Total Deity.

Well, existentially, the Paradise Trinity of Supremacy is functioning, but it isn't functioning in that way in an experiential sense, is it? Because the Supreme Being has yet to evolve. If our present universe age started with the creation of the twenty one Ancients of Days, what event is likely to end the present universe age? If our present universe age started with the creation of the twenty one Ancients of Days, what event is likely to end the present universe age? Audience: New creation? Well, I think it will be the settling of the seven superuniverses in light and life, and that event will be witnessed by the emergence of the Supreme Being from non-contactable status to contactable status. When the Supreme Being has fully emerged, then, I think the present universe age will have come to an end. (Break in tape). How does the Supreme Being get this experience? Well, let's take Julia's mind that she's so attached to. Audience: Laughter.

I don't think that the Supreme Being is concerned with what happens on the first five levels of adjutant mind, that's animal mind. If you go up on one of the worlds of the Life Carriers, one of the biologic laboratories in the near regions of Salvington, the capitol of the local universe, there's a central placement of the seven adjutant mind spirits. And for the first five, you can take off qualitative and quantitative readings. But for the last two--spirit of worship, spirit of wisdom--you don't get quantitative readings. Those two repercuss right in the Creative Spirit of the local universe, because basically, these seven adjutant mind spirits are in a sense levels of her consciousness.

Now, when Julia worships, or shows wisdom, she uses this mind. And in using it, I think there is a repercussion. The best illustration I know: I pick a chair up.It's obvious to all of you that as I pick this chair up, my feet push down on the floor of this room with equal force. Right? OK. Now the picking up of the chair is Julia's experience in making some decision. And that remains her experience. That registers in her soul. This is the spiritual nature of the Adjuster making carbon copies. But the down-push of her feet on the floor I think registers in the local universe Mother Spirit and via that point, in the Supreme Being, so that all experience is registering in the Supreme Being. Hence, he is a product of all experience, whether it be the experiential nature of a Thought Adjuster, the experience acquired by the Michael Sons in their adventures out here in time and space, the wise acts--or one wise act of a Planetary Prince--all of this that's going on in all the myriads of worlds, systems, constellations, local universes, seven superuniverses, the judicial acts of the Ancients of Days, all of the uncounted actions of seraphic ministers, all of this is funneling into and becoming a part of the emerging, evolving, growing, experiential nature of the Supreme Being.

We contribute to his growth; he contributes to our growth. We can grow because we are in him, and he is growing. Is it possible that anybody is not in him? The answer is yes. Beings whose nature is inherently of the previous universe age are what we might call pre-Supreme Beings. And they don't grow. Does a Divine Counselor evolve? How could he? The day he was created, he presents the council of the Paradise Trinity in absolute and ultimate perfection. How can you improve on that? Can you? You can't grow, can you. When the twenty one Ancients of Days were commissioned, they began to rule the seven superuniverses with the flawlessness of trinitarian perfection. When they adjudicated the first problem in justice presented to them, they adjudicated just exactly as would the Paradise Trinity. Do they grow?

The answer is no. They are pre-Supreme in nature, aren't they? Have we got any other evidence? You see, in our thinking, time means experience, and experience means evolutionary growth. I'm trying to get you out of this groove, so that you can realize that that which appears to be universal, isn't. It is just extremely prevalent. It is the characteristic of the present universe age, but not universal. Can we find any other evidence along these lines? Yes, we can. Two more bits of evidence. Consider a Mighty Messenger, and this would apply to his other Trinity embraced associates--what I say of one, I say of the other. What happens to him? He has the same experience of growth which we have, except that, on the way up, he's rebellion-tested. That's the one peculiarity of a Mighty Messenger -- goes through Havona, and there's the Father, and there's the Corps of the Finality--shares our destiny. Probably is given a long enough tour of duty with the Corps of the Finality to give him a feeling of satisfaction of experience. And at an appropriate time after he has become a finaliter, he is withdrawn from the Finality Corps.

In groups of so many thousand, these rebellion tested finaliters are embraced by the Paradise Trinity. And this embrace does something to them. At least for the present universe age, it reaches ahead in the stream of time, and advance-precipitates out of the stream of time onto this Mighty Messenger future growth which might have been his during the rest of the present universe age had he not been Trinity embraced. And, at least for the present universe age, a Mighty Messenger ceases to grow. He can't grow. He's already had it given to him. And that's why he can be commissioned as an associate of a Divine Counselor, who doesn't grow. He is temporarily a stationary son, neither descending nor ascending. As it says in one of the papers, I think written by a Mighty Messenger, he speaks rather hopefully, he said, we have never been informed that this limitation of growth extends beyond the confines of the present universe age.

Is there any other evidence that we can find which helps us get a feeling for this fifth level of Deity function? Yes, there is. It might be a little bit fun for you to note down where else you can find about Creature Trinitized Sons, because it's not told all in one place. Can I give you a series of pairs of numbers? The first number is the paper, and the second number is the section in that paper. Paper 17, section 1. I'm going to give you six cross-references. Paper 26, section 11. Paper 20, section 8. Paper 55, section 12. Paper 117, section 2. Paper 23, section 4. You'll have a lot of fun, reading the tail-end of this paper and then following it up. There's something funny about these Creature Trinitized Sons. You'll recall that they are of two basic kinds. There are Creature Trinitized Sons who have homogeneous ancestors, and there are Creature Trinitized Sons who have heterogeneous, unlike, ancestors. What do we mean by homogeneous ancestors?

Well, two finaliters want to trinitize. The finaliters are alike--homogeneous ancestry. Two Havona natives want to trinitize. Again, homogeneous ancestry. And these are the Creature Trinitized Sons that are, for the most part, discussed in the paper on Trinitized Sons. And they become respectively Celestial Guardians and High Son Assistants, if they're later Trinity embraced. Otherwise, they work all over the universes. You find them on the inner Havona circuit. You find them on the worlds of the Seven Supreme Executives. You find them out working with the Trinity Teacher Sons, and so on. They have one peculiarity, these Creature Trinitized Sons of homogeneous parents: they can't experience evolutionary growth. The specific discussion of why they can't is the next to the last reference I've given you. 117, section 2.

These beings are in, but not of, the present universe age. They're very much like a Divine Counselor, who is in, but not of, the present universe age. He functions in the seven superuniverses, but his status is like the preceding universe age. Pre-evolutionary. These Creature Trinitized Sons are working in the seven superuniverses and in the Grand Universe, but their status is as of the next universe age, which is post-evolutionary. Example: When two dissimilar beings trinitize another--now you've got heterogeneous ancestry. As with a finaliter and a Paradise citizen. They always succeed, and they produce a being so far removed from the problems and situations of the present universe age, that he isn't even allowed to function. And those folks are described, partly in this paper and also in the last reference that I gave you. Paper 23, section 4.

Every such Creature Trinitized Son is immediately withdrawn from activity and is sent to Vicegerington in association with a Solitary Messenger, and they're held in reserve for activities having to do with the future universe ages. In other words, this whole order of Creature Trinitized Sons represents something which is really germane to the ages of the future, not to the present universe age. These beings are not participating in the growth of the Supreme Being. Hence, the passage of time does not produce experiential growth. They do not change in status. It's kind of hard to get out of that grove, isn't it? To us, and to most beings living in the present universe age, the evolutionary principle applies. Time passes, we grow, we experience, status changes.

We grow from babies, to children, to adults. And on to morontians, spirit ascenders, finaliters. But that's because we're part of the Supreme Being. And we are participating in his growth as he is totaling our growth. Do you have a feeling for the peculiarity of growth which attaches to the present universe age? You see, the Supreme Being is God as comprehensible to evolutionary creatures. And the kind of a God who has a beginning is the kind of a God we can understand. We're told that as the sovereignty of the Supreme grows through the evolutionary growth of the seven superuniverses, and this means that increasingly spirit in the presence of personality, through mind, is coming to dominate matter. This is the growth of the power of the Almighty. This coalesces.

I think of a great river system. I symbolize it as a greater Mississippi River, with seven great tributaries, each representing the coalescing power flow from a superuniverse. And each of these tributaries has its tributaries, which grow smaller and smaller as you go down from major to minor sector, to local universe, to constellation systems, and planets, even to us as individuals. We're the rivulets. This mighty inflow of experiential, evolutionary power coalesces with the spirit person of the Supreme. And it doesn't do this in the seven superuniverses. It does it--of all places--on the pilot world of the outer Havona circuit. That's the second change which took place in Havona. You see, Havona is related to the superuniverses, as well as the superuniverses are related to Havona. They affect each other. What happened when Grandfanda arrived? You remember, he was the first mortal ascender to reach Havona. And Havona has just never been quite the same since. Just a lot of things happened.

Let's take inventory: Until the arrival of Grandfanda, there had never been such a thing as a graduate guide in Havona. But Grandfanda was met by the first of the graduate guides, Malvorian, who did greet this pilgrim discoverer of Havona. Until Grandfanda arrived, Havona natives never evolved. But now they evolve. For example, they evolve into the various Finaliter Corps on Paradise. This is evolution. In each company in the mortal Finaliter Corps there's one Havona native. And they have their own corps, too. Until the arrival of Grandfanda, and the later appearance of finaliters, Havona natives could never trinitize with ascendant beings, could they? Because there were no ascendant beings available. Until Grandfanda arrived, there were no secondary supernaphim.

When Grandfanda arrived on the pilot world of the outermost Havona circuit, simultaneously, the first Paradise citizen arrived on the pilot world of the innermost Havona circuit to begin the outward traversal of Havona as Grandfanda was beginning the inward traversal of Havona. And you'll recall the citizens of Paradise and the evolutionary citizens of the superuniverses first met face to face on the fourth Havona circuit. Think back to God the sevenfold. Think back to God the sevenfold. The growth of the Supreme represents a collaboration between the creator children of the Paradise Deities and their Paradise parents. And the eldest of these children--and in a sense, they're representatives of the seven master spirits, aren't they?--that's the highest order of Deity which is sub-Paradise. And what is the origin of the reflective spirits? Each one of the seven Master Spirits collaborated with the Paradise Trinity in the production of seven reflective spirits which were like human nature.

And when this cycle had run its course, we had 49 reflective spirits, and that particular aspect of cooperation between the creator children of Paradise Deity and Paradise Deity, that cycle had run its course. You couldn't get any more, could you? Audience: (Can't understand tape). The first time the Supreme Being acted, he acted because the foundation for action had been thus established. That was his first function as a creator. He never functioned before or since. (Break in tape) In talking about the first universe age, we can make an observation: It has no origin in time, does it? But it does have an ending in time, doesn't it? It ends when the second universe age is born. And I have elected to present the opening of the second universe age as the creation of the 21 Ancients of Days. If you're going to pick a marker, it seems to me that's as good as any.

The 21 Ancients of Days were created and commissioned, I think, this is the essence of the dawn of the present universe age, the second universe age. The age of the seven superuniverses. Yes? Audience: The Eternals were created with Havona? Yes. So were the Trinitized Secrets of Supremacy. Eternals of Days means just what the name implies. And Ancients of Days--they're the oldest beings in existence. Anyone behind them doesn't have age; they've always been around.