The Absolutes, Part IV
Transcript of a tape recording of Bill Sadler at a study group
Audience: I'll face it with you.
Audience: Laughter.
And then we've already discussed the seventh Triunity, haven't we? Remember we were talking about the fact that the Father and the Conjoint Actor and the Universal Absolute are inter-relating Deities.
The Universal Absolute hooks up the other two Absolutes. The Conjoint Actor functionally inter-relates matter and spirit, the Son and Paradise. And the Father, of course, inter-relates everything. So it's natural that these associators should constitute a Trinity in and of themselves.
Now, while we're at it, let's look at page 1151, and take a look at non-triunity associations. These are triunities that do not contain the First Source and Center. And they give us just two of them here. I think that's enough for us to know about. They call them Triodities. One is the Triodity of Potentiality, and one is the Triodity of Actuality. One is the three Absolutes of potential--Deity, Universal, and Unqualified--the other consists of the three Absolutes of actuality--the Son, Paradise, and the Infinite Spirit.
And they don't classify the Father. Elsewhere in these papers they refuse to classify the Father as either actual or potential; they just say he's original.
Elsewhere in these papers they refuse to classify the Father as either actual or potential; they just say he's original. Because he's both actual and potential, and probably something else for which we have no name.
Audience: Where is this placed in our tree? These triodities.
Let's get away from the tree now. The tree applies only if you've got a Trinity.
Audience: And this is not a part of it, though.
No, not at all. There are only three trees: The Paradise Trinity, the First Experiential Trinity--otherwise known as the Trinity Ultimate--and the Second Experiential Trinity--otherwise known as the Trinity Absolute. Unless you want to conceive of the Trinity of Trinities. And that is a tree of trees.
Yes?
Audience: Wasn't the Triunity in that tree?
Only the First Triunity, but no other Triunity is made up of three members who constitute a Trinity. But the First Triunity has a relationship to a Trinity. No other Triunity has such a relationship.
So our tree comparison works only once here. It doesn't work the other six times.
You see, this thing is not a dead-level pattern. There are funny little eccentrics that appear all over this. It's not just a mechanism. The I AM has a sevenfold relationship, six of which are comparable, and that seventh one is cute--it's internal. Not like the other six.
The Triodities represent an awfully valuable concept because these are good ways of symbolizing all growth. If it isn't here, it involves the Triodity of Potentiality. If it is here, it's held in the gravity grasps of the Triodity of Actuality.
All evolution is nothing more than a transfer of reality from one Triodity to the other, from the potential to the actual.
Let's say that a star cools down; it gets very, very cold, very dense. The atoms get packed in closer and closer together. The electrons move in as heat loss equivalates to a slowing down of speed of rotation. And they can only maintain that speed if they give up distance. So the electrons are hunching in closer and closer and closer to the nucleus'. And this thing can go on through atomic condensation to electronic condensation until this stuff begins to approach the solidity of Paradise absolutum.
Audience: (Can't understand comment).
Until it begins to approach. But as it approaches ultimatonic condensation, the whole thing blows higher than a kite, and you're back to the puissant energy level.
So matter can recirculate. But only life and personal life can become extinguished. When they say now that the First Source and Center is "primal in all domains," this means more to you now, doesn't it?
As you examine a portraiture of the mechanics of being primal, this is how he does it. He has first of all a unity relationship, then duality relationships, directly with each of these absolutes, including himself, and now triunity relationships.
He is related to the Universe as--now they are talking about how does he work today. Material gravity focuses in the Isle of Paradise. And that's why he's got to be right at the center of upper Paradise. He can't move, because he has to be there for this machine to be Absolute. As mind converges in the Infinite Spirit, as cosmic mind converges in the Seven Master Spirits, and as the factualizing mind of the Supreme converges in Majeston. Dorothy's boyfriend. Audience: Laughter.
As spirit converges in the Eternal Son, as capacity for Deity action is in the Deity Absolute, as capacity for infinity response is in the Unqualified Absolute, and as these two Absolutes, Qualified and Unqualified, are co-ordinated and unified in and by the Universal Absolute, and as the potential personality of an evolutionary moral being or of any other moral being is centered in the personality of the Universal Father.
You see, he's retired from direct contact with things except in the field of personality. Here he did not retire. Otherwise he works always through something.
Let's compare that with something in Paper 10. In page 5, we were talking about how the First Source and Center is related to the universe. On page 111, they discuss how he functions outside of Havona. Now, in this first listing, there's no qualifications. This is how he's related to the universe, I deduce, including Havona. But here, is how he functions outside of Havona, in the phenomenal universes.
As a Creator, through his Creator Sons. As a Controller, through the gravity center of Paradise. As Spirit, through the Eternal Son. As mind, through the Conjoint Creator. As a Father, direct contact with all creatures through the personality circuit. As a person, he acts directly throughout creation by his fragments--in mortal man, the Thought Adjusters. As total Deity, only in the Trinity.
It's very interesting to compare those two things, isn't it? The difference between relationship and function. You see, here we're dealing with actualities, so the Absolutes don't come in to this listing at all. Audience: I feel more comfortable right here.
Of course you do. This is what is. It'll never be complete from a quantitative standpoint, but it can become functional from a qualitative standpoint. The second level, I don't think, can ever function in infinity, because I don't think God the Absolute can ever be finished in the sense that God the Supreme and God the Ultimate can be. But that doesn't mean he can't be there. And that doesn't mean that there can't be a growing function, an eternally growing function on that level. The Trinity of Trinities could become functionally operative only in eternity. And as long as we have time, there's a future. And as long as we have a future, there's something that's left to be done.
Audience: It's like throwing out a gigantic boomerang, knowing it's going to come back after it goes through long--
Suppose we jump from here to universal unity, where they have a little bit more to say about the Absolutes. Here they say, on page 644, they say that the Absolutes are unified in the Universal, "co-ordinated in the Ultimate, conditioned in the Supreme, and time-space modified in the Sevenfold."
Here we're considering the down-stepping of potential, whether it is material energy starting out as absoluta, segregata, ultimata, gravita, coming down to where the Supreme can get a hold of it, and it passes through the Ultimate on the way. This would be true of spiritual potential as well as material potential. This is true, I think, of mind potential.
"On sub-infinite levels there are three Absolutes, but in infinity, they appear to be one. On Paradise there are three personalizations of Deity, but in the Trinity they are one."
Then they go on to say, which came first? Is it the Absolute? Was the Absolute antecedent to the Trinity? Or is the Trinity antecedent to the Absolute? Is the Qualified Absolute a force presence independent of the Trinity? Does the presence of the Deity Absolute connote the unlimited function of the Trinity? And is the Universal Absolute the final function of the Trinity, even a Trinity of Trinities?
Well, they say, fine. Let's have the Absolute as the ancestor of all things. Gee, we feel good right away. We got it down to one thing now. But we can't accept this, because the Trinity is eternal. Nothing is ancestral to the Trinity. All we can do is to say then that the Absolute is to all universe intelligences the impersonal and co-ordinate reaction of the Trinity, maybe of Trinities, to all basic and primary space situations, intra-universal and extra-universal. In other words, this is the entity who is concerned with events of the present in terms of the cosmos infinite. This Absolute, the three Absolutes, is reacting always in terms of--as though we'd come to the end, and it was all here. This is a pure eternity reaction impinging on time.
We react differently as our lives develop.Boys meet girls, get married, have children, and then react like parents--unfortunately. But let's say the three Absolutes, even when they're in puberty, are reacting as though they were grandparents. Do you follow me? They're reacting in terms of the future, and the past, and of course, that reaction impinges on the present as something unfathomable--because how can you fathom out a reaction which has no relationship to time but still registers in time? Do you follow me?
A twelve year old who makes decisions in terms of his grandparent attitude would be a very mysterious twelve year old, wouldn't he?
And they say, now look, as far as you're concerned, accept the Paradise Trinity as final. This is your best working hypothesis. Because if you want to go beyond that, then set up the I AM as ancestral to all things. If you must have a single starting point, you can't have the Absolute, because the Trinity's eternal. You say, all right, but now, the Absolute's eternal, and I want one. All right, then take the I AM as your best speculation.
The I AM is "the primal cause and the unqualified source of both the Trinity and the Absolute. When, therefore, we crave to entertain a personal concept of the Absolute, we revert to our ideas and ideals of the Paradise Father. When we desire to facilitate comprehension or augment consciousness of this otherwise impersonal Absolute, we revert to the fact that the Universal Father is the existential Father of absolute personality; the Eternal Son is the Absolute Person, though not, in the experiential sense, the personalization of the Absolute."
That would be God the Absolute.
"And then we go on to envisage the experiential Trinities as culminating in the experiential personalization of the Deity Absolute, while conceiving the Universal Absolute as constituting the universe and the extra-universe phenomena of the manifest presence of the impersonal activities of the unified and co-ordinated Deity associations of supremacy, ultimacy, and infinity--the Trinity of Trinities."
Now, we should come back to this, but before we do, we should leave this story in suspense.
So far, we've considered only the third floor of the firehouse. But the Father projected two more floors, and this is where the mud really hit the fan. Any tensions which were set up topside were small compared to the tensions which were set up when topside is related to bottomside.
Over on page 1158, they talk about what happened when God projected two more floors in the firehouse. Page 1158 has got a subtitle there, "Promulgation of Finite Reality."
"Prior to the deitization of the finite, it would appear that all reality diversification took place on absolute levels;"--that's all we've been talking about, pretty much all day--"but the volitional act promulgating finite reality connotes a qualification of absoluteness and implies the appearance of relativities."
"While we present this narrative as a sequence and portray the historic appearance of the finite as a direct derivative of the absolute, it should be borne in mind that transcendentals both preceded and succeeded all that is finite. Transcendental ultimates are, in relation to the finite, both causal and consummational."
On the next page, it says: "From the creature standpoint, that which is transcendental would appear to have eventuated as a consequence of the finite; from the eternity viewpoint, in anticipation of the finite; and there are those who have considered it as a `pre-echo' of the finite."
And listen, that thing is borne out in our whole discussion of this energy series. At the third level of energy, it's called ultimata. It's the energy domain of God the Ultimate. And the sixth level of energy was tranosta. Which is the energy associated with the transcendentalers on Paradise. We meet the Ultimate coming and going, don't we? The pre-echo.
Finite possibility is inherent in the Infinite. But the transmutation of possibility to probability and inevitability must be attributed to the self-existent free will of the First Source and Center activating all triunity associations. Only the infinity of the Father's will could ever have so qualified the absolute level of existence as to eventuate an ultimate or to create a finite.
With the appearance of relative and qualified reality, there comes into being a new cycle of reality, the growth cycle, a majestic down-sweep from the heights of infinity to the domain of the finite, forever swinging inward to Paradise and Deity, always seeking those high destinies commensurate with an infinity source. These inconceivable transactions mark the beginning of universe history, mark the coming into existence of time itself. To the creature, the beginning of the finite is the genesis of reality.
As viewed by creature mind, there is no actuality conceivable prior to the finite. This newly appearing finite reality exists in two original phases: primary maximums, the supremely perfect reality, the Havona type of universe and creature. Secondary maximums, the supremely perfected reality, the superuniverse type of creature and creation. But they're talking about settled in light and life here, now. These, then, are the two original manifestations that constitutionally perfect and the evolutionally perfected. The two are co-ordinate in eternity relationships, but within the limits of time they are seemingly different. A time factor means growth to that which grows. Secondary finites grow. Hence, those that are growing must appear as incomplete in time. But these differences which are so important this side of Paradise are non-existent in eternity.
"We speak of the perfect and the perfected as primary and secondary maximums, but there is still another type: Trinitizing and other relationships between the primaries and the secondaries result in the appearance of tertiary maximums--things, meanings, and values that are neither perfect nor perfected yet are co-ordinate with both ancestral factors."
That's cross-personalization.
And then, when the Father did this, there were repercussions and responses. The Deity response involved the appearance of the three levels of supremacy--power, spirit, and mind. The universe response involved setting up the superuniverse space level. The creature repercussion involved Havona natives and folks like us. The divinity response involved the appearance of God the Sevenfold.
And then, let's spend just a couple of minutes on transcendentals, because we should touch on the second floor of the firehouse. "Transcendentals are subinfinite and subabsolute, but superfinite and supercreatural."
"That which is transcendental is not necessarily non-developmental, but it is supervolitional in the finite sense; neither is it nonexperiential, but it is super experience as such is meaningful to creatures."
They get something up there which is experience, but it is not something which we would recognize as experience. Perhaps the best illustration of such a paradox is the Central Universe of Perfection. It is hardly absolute; only the Paradise Isle is truly absolute in the materialized sense. Neither is it a finite, evolutionary creation as are the seven superuniverses. Havona is eternal, but not changeless in the sense of being a universe of non-growth. It is inhabited by creatures, Havona natives, who never were actually created--there's always the Infinite Spirit--for they are eternally existent. Havona thus illustrates something which is not exactly finite nor yet absolute. Havona further acts as a buffer between absolute Paradise and finite creations, still further illustrating the function of transcendentals. "But Havona itself is not a transcendental--it is Havona."
They don't categorize it.
"As the Supreme is associated with finites, so the Ultimate is identified with transcendentals. But though we thus compare Supreme and Ultimate, they differ by something more than degree; the difference is also a matter of quality. The Ultimate is something more than a super-Supreme projected on the transcendental level. The Ultimate is all of that, but more:The Ultimate is an eventuation of new Deity realities, the qualification of new phases of the theretofore unqualified."
And then they list ten things that have to do with the appearance of the transcendental level: the Ultimate, the Master Universe and its Architects, two orders of Paradise Force Organizers, certain modifications in space potency, certain values of spirit, certain meanings of mind, absonite qualities and realities, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, and space.
"In the eternity of the past, the forces of the Absolutes, the spirits of the Deities, and the personalities of the Gods stirred in response to the primordial self-will of self-existent self-will."
Audience: That's a mouthful.
Isn't it? It's the yolk of the egg.
"In this universe age, we are all witnessing the stupendous repercussions of the far-flung cosmic panorama of the sub-absolute manifestations of the limitless potentials of all these realities. And it is altogether possible that the continued diversification of the original reality of the First Source and Center may proceed onward and outward through age upon age, on and on, into the faraway and inconceivable stretches of absolute infinity."
Audience: There we go again.
Dearly beloved, we are in on the ground floor of this deal. They're still offering common stock at a discount in this proposition.
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship