WILLIAM S. SADLER, JR.
23 July 1960
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA
Part 3 of 11
Transcribed by Kristen Maaherra
Scanned by Christel Schmidt
Formatted by David KantorPart 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11
Audience: Well, it had to be. And all the philosophies that I could read -- and I read a number of them - all ended up the same way, so you end up with the same pattern, and, again, it is boring. (Can't understand tape). This will never get boring, I don't think.
I don't think so.
Audience: In fact, I can hardly understand it.
Audience: Actually, I think it gets more intriguing the farther you go with it.
Audience: Yes (can't understand tape).
Audience: Bill, you still got more to go on the 26th year. About a couple of miles.
When was this?
Audience: Didn't you get bored about the 26th year you had the Papers?
No ...
Audience: You got bored with that physical ailment. Wasn't it your 26th year when you fell and really got a chance to read the book? Deep thinking?
I have stayed away from this book for a while. It's like letting your acreage lie fallow.
Audience: Letting the seed develop?
That's right.. And then I've come back to it.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Yes. Too much of this is like too much of anything. I've let this sit for a couple of years. Years ago. I don't anymore, now, because we have the book, and I'm perambulating around.
Audience: It's a beautiful word use, I like that.
Audience: The first few years I had it, it scared me to death. Now, let's see where -- .
Audience: (Can't understand tape). Dog meat, oh, that's what it's been to Chuck.
Audience: The word is bug, (can't understand tape), in the common vernacular.
Audience: Never say it was (can't understand tape), it was dog.
Yeah, after a while you get used to it, and you can live with it.
Audience: I sure had to change my ideas.
Audience: I'd like to ask you something. I'm not taking issue, but I'd just like a little more explanation on the word static that you used. It's always been one of my pet things that nothing can be static and live -- it would stagnate. And you used the word static in a different way than I've ever had it used before. Than I've ever heard it used before. As being a very living kind of thing. And static, I had said perfection, to me, as far as I can conceive of perfection, couldn't be static, or it would stagnate.
I think your statement is practically correct. I've used this in connection with God.
Audience: Well, that's what I said-
Not in connection with --
Audience: It's a different way than I've ever thought of it.
Yes, that's right. I think that would be true of any creature, or of any subabsolute being. They couldn't be static. They'd have to be growing.
Audience: If you're static -
You stick to your concept.
Audience: You start smelling.
Yes. Only God could be static and still grow.
Audience: Because he is God.
He's infinite. He is God. The rules just don't apply there.
Audience: Wonderful, that's wonderful, you know?
Audience: Well, that was really a show-stopper for me for a minute, as we were going along there, because that just blew everything I'd thought of all to pieces.
Leona, let me show you something here. You don't realize what you've been in to. Turn to page 2.
Audience: Laughter.
Audience: Oh, boy. Oh, that's what I like.
Audience: That's a nice way to start.
Look down a little bit to near the bottom of the top third of the page. About paragraph 1,2,3,4. "Deity functions on personal, prepersonal, and superpersonal levels." Forget that. "Total Deity is functional on the following seven levels. 1. Static-self-contained and self-existent Deity."
Now, you're not afraid of that anymore, are you?
"2. Potential -- self-willed and self-purposive Deity. 3. Associative -- self-personalized and divinely fraternal Deity. "
Audience: And I have a little note, but I've never gone back and explored it.
Right. Now, this is our whole -- our whole story of the zero age is an exploration of just those 3 sentences.
Audience: Pre-creation. I have it written down that you gave here sometime.
Three sentences, that's all it's talking about. Only, I want to go back of static in our first prologue, because there's something that is bigger than all of this. And I use the term, "the infinite. " And the infinite is revealed to me as God.
Audience: It has to be this.
Right.
Audience: Sure, I mean it's obvious.
He's the underlying principle. And this is what we're seeking for. And that's what I'm trying to distill out of this book. The story that's implied in this book, which you can interpolate and exterpolate [extrapolate] from what they say, without anything freakish or bizarre, just reasonable reasoning. It tells me that the quest of quests is the attempt to find this infinite. I'm convinced I never will. I'm also convinced I will never be stopped. These 2 conclusions I've reached.
Audience: Say those again, please.
I never will find the infinite, but nothing will ever stop me in the quest.
Audience: He just got through saying in different words, I know I never will understand it, but I'm going to keep on --
Audience: I know where I want to go, now whether I ever get there or not is really immaterial, as long as I don't get stopped in my--
You will never be stopped. You have the equipment. When I analyzed -- I got laid up for 6 weeks with laryngitis, and for 6 weeks I sat at a typewriter. I found out the perfect way to work was to sleep twice a day and work twice a day, so you're fresh twice instead of once.
Audience: Laughter. (Can't understand tape).
Well, I slept mornings, and I slept early evenings. I worked afternoons, and I worked from midnight on.
Audience: It's quiet then, anyway.
Oh, God, yes. And you finally get to the place where you've moved on in concept to where you can think in an area. And I analyzed what kind of growth is going to take place when the whole Master Universe is done. This is postultimate growth. Or absolute growth. I analyzed the conditions. Then I analyzed what kind of equipment do human beings have.
Audience: And you in particular, because you were doing it?
No. Anybody.
Audience: Anybody.
Anybody's got this equipment
Audience: Everybody being equal.
Right
Audience: All right.
And human beings have got 2 things. They've got 2 priceless possessions. They get them both from God. Number 1, your personality. Our personality has got a potential of 7 dimensions, only 3 of which are expressible as long as we're finite creatures. 3 of them are expressible on the absonite level. That's in between. That's neither absolute nor finite. But the final dimension of human personality is capable of sub-infinite penetration of the absolute level.
Now, I analyzed that to mean just this. I can never encompass that level, but I can get there and keep on growing. And, of course, when they say sub-infinite, I buy that, I'll never be an infinite being. But nothing is going to stop my growth.
The second piece of equipment I've got is this priceless fragment of God. And nothing's ever going to stop that. There's a gas tank that's never going to run empty.
Audience: How can we destroy it?
We can alienate it. But those 2 things tell me that we have the equipment right now --
Audience: We always had it
-- to go the limit. There is nothing that will ever stop us. And the mere fact that the goal is non-attainable doesn't bother me. If you look at the last paragraph in Paper 10. A wonderful old character writes this Paper, he's a Universal Censor, and for some reason or another, I think of an old Marine Corps colonel, who's been everywhere and seen everything, including delirium tremens.
Audience: I don't know what it is?
A Marine Corps colonel. And he's talking about what they're telling the boys in boot training camp. About how far you can go, you know. And--
Audience: Boot camp ...
Starting at the bottom of page 116, he says:
"It may be possible that the finaliters will partially attain the Deity Absolute, but even if they should, still in the eternity of eternities the problem of the Universal Absolute --"
That's that middle link.
"will continue to intrigue, mystify, baffle, and challenge the ascending and progressing finaliters, for we perceive that the unfathomability of the cosmic relationships of the Universal Absolute will tend to grow in proportions as the material universes and their spiritual administration continue to expand"
In other words, you're trying to encompass something which is growing faster than you're growing. And then:
"Only infinity can disclose the Father-Infinite."
Audience: That statement you made before the last one in the book is like a dog trying to catch his tail, I think.
Um-hum. Or it's like rowing, chasing a motorboat. It doesn't mean you're not making progress. And it also doesn't mean the gap isn't getting worse all the time. But that's all right. That's all right. We're still making progress. And if we ever came to the end of the road, then we'd know that we would have arrived at the static (can't understand tape) which is not for creatures.
Audience: We would not be (can't understand tape).
This is not for creatures.
Audience: That's what I was going to (can't understand tape) well there it is again, because we can't -- We would become static if we reached that goal. And we would deteriorate.
Right.
Audience: We would probably (can't understand tape).
When people present a static condition as a goal, then you come to the eschatology of Hinduism and Buddhism-- southern Buddhism. Nirvana. Where you unite with the Absolute, or the oversoul. And then you lose individuality. This is the union of the drop of water with the ocean. And from there on out, you can't say what this person is. All you can say is what he isn't.
Audience: He's not a person. He's become part of the -
He's not a person. He's not not a person. He's not alive. He is not dead. He is not conscious. He is not unconscious. Or they use 2 Sanskrit words which I've learned, "nitta natta," not this, not that. I don't buy something which can only be described in terms of negatives. This (tapping The Urantia Book) describes something in terms of positives.
Audience: You might find personality in this book referred to as a little different than (can't understand tape).
It's a 4th reality. It's not matter, it's not mind, it's not spirit, but it is real. I use this illustration in one of the Appendices. No one has ever seen "red". Red is a concept. But not a reality. We know red, we perceive red only when we perceive something which is red.
Neither will anyone ever perceive personality as such. We will perceive personality only when we encounter someone who is a person. Personality is pure quality with no quantity whatsoever, whereas matter, mind, and spirit differ in quality, and are also quantitative realities.
Example. In Paper 12, on the Universe of Universes, when they discuss their computations of gravity,they can compute the quantitative output of material gravity, mind gravity, spirit gravity -- but personality gravity is non-computable. Mathematics won't touch it because there's no quantity to deal with, just quality.
Personality is something which God gives living creatures and which does 2 things to them: First, it puts them in the personality circuit, which is an independent, direct relationship to God -- independent of the Thought Adjuster. And second, these creatures are forever liberated from slavish response to antecedent causation. They don't just fall over like dominoes when the next domino hits them. Which would be characteristic of a piece of machinery. Or a subpersonal thing.
A creature has choice. Not absolute choice, but relative choice. And my favorite illustration is, you can't decide not to have wrinkles in your face, but you can choose which kind you want to have, from frowning or from smiling. That is a choosable proposition.
I think of choice -- real choice, I don't mean trivial choice, shall I have some coffee, that's a choice.
Audience: (Can't understand tape). Laughter.
No, that's another choice. But these are such casual choices.
Audience: They're insignificant
Insignificant choices. But I think of significant choices as taking place in human life in this wise. Let's parallel living experience to a railroad system. When I'm on the straightaway, that's about all I can do is go down the straightaway. I don't have many situations come up. But every so often, I pass over a switch, and every time I encounter that switch condition, I do have the possibility of a choice. And I can throw that switch either way. And these are not trivial choices. These are major choices.
Now, since I have personality, I have prevision. On page 193. I don't just have to learn everything by experimentation. Page 193, the first couple of paragraphs there discuss this point. Because I am a person as well as a conscious being, I have reflective self-consciousness. I'd like to call that, "second degree consciousness." I not only know, but I am aware of the fact that I know. This is consciousness of consciousness.
And one of the by-products of this, I think, is the ability to forecast. Which is why we use a different term for animals and humans. We speak of animal behavior but human conduct. I can, when I hit this switch, I have got a telescope -- or binoculars -- and I can look down the road a long ways, and say, "Now where does damn road lead to?" See?
And I don't have to go down the wrong siding necessarily. I can feel out the consequences of action before I take the action. So that, I do not actually have to have experience with evil. I can limit this to experience with potential evil.
Jesus had a thoroughgoing experience with potential evil in his life. He had very little experience with actual evil. Very little. But always, the potential was there. The stimulus to the choosing of the good was present.
Again, page 52. Paragraph 2. Havona natives don't require this. Havona natives, inherently perfect beings, don't require this choice-stimulus. But we do. And if we didn't have it, then we couldn't see the good and differentiate it by contrast We are aware of -- to use symbolism -- the virtue of white, only when we pause to consider the contrastive lack of virtue in black We think in terms of opposites. We dichotomize. You know, I think --
And these are the decisions, I ~ that you make that determine progress. Now, if you're sincere, you've got some field glasses. You can look way down the road. If you're insincere, you've got warped lenses in there. You're doing a snow-job on yourself. You're conning yourself. You're rationalizing beyond all normal reason. You're justifying your own ego. You are putting your ego at the center of things.
And again, page 142, the only paragraph on the page. When you put your ego at the center of the personality system, you disrupt the whole cosmic plan. Because the Adjuster is supposed to be at the center of that system.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
You just disrupt that particular human atom, that's all, because you've disrupted the nucleus.
Audience: But could you, with any degree of success, accepting part of this and actually and be using this for wrong choice -- I don't think we could
I think you could have intellectual intrigue. I think you could be intellectually intrigued with this book and be spiritually dead. Judas comprehended. He had a much better intellectual comprehension of Jesus' teachings than, say, the Alpheus twins. But if you asked me to make book on Judas's survival, I will quote you odds that he didn't That's my opinion.
Audience: I wouldn't take your bet, either.
No. And I would make book that the Alpheus twins did. At least Jesus intimated to them that there would be a lot of crowds that they would be working together with in the future.
Audience: However, he did it with forethought, as you said (can't understand tape).
He kept throwing the wrong switch. And, one day, he formed a habit. And one day, he just threw one wrong switch too many. We're told that up there on the mansion worlds, somewhere along about world number 5, we fuse with our Thought Adjusters. Now, this does not mean that we've achieved perfection. Far from it. We have most of the Paradise ascent ahead of us. But it does mean, that as far as this choosing business is concerned, we have made a final choice. We have no reservations left. We have chosen to find God and to attempt to do his will. And that choice has been made with such finality, that it is irrevocable. Our purpose has become perfect Our techniques leave much to be desired, I'm sure. We're awkward, we're bumbling, we say the wrong things, we've got to be moralized, socialized, and what not.
Audience: But no more wrong switches.
We'll never knowingly throw a wrong switch again. We might inadvertently. Yes, we'll make trouble. Out of ignorance. But never by design.
Audience: But now we can so (can't understand tape).
Yes. Now. This works the other way. too. There are, I think, to finite creatures some limits of choice. And I think as you start in the middle. and you move Godward, eventually you cross a threshold. And that's when you fuse with your Adjuster. That recognizes the irrevocability of that last choice. You've really said it You're never going to change your mind
I think you can start moving in the other direction. And I think. in theological and Urantia terms. when you cross the threshold between sin and iniquity -- this is the threshold in the opposite direction. If you make a final choice against God that results in the final deformation of your character and being. you could never again retrace your steps. I think you can make a final choice in either direction.
Somewhere down the pike. Lucifer made such a choice. Lucifer started out in the middle. Lucifer perpetrated evil, not sin. Lucifer was sincere, to start with. At some point down the line. he became insincere. And this happened when he realized that his whole project was ungood
Audience: Ego.
Prior to that time. he had reasoned, regardless of the consequences elsewhere. "I'm doing the right thing for my system. This is a good measure for the system. We need something new .. This is revolutionary." Well. this is how we make progress. But at some point down the line. he became totally disillusioned This wasn't good for the system, or Lucifer. or anybody else. He stoutly maintained his position. At that point, evil translated to sin. Now--
Audience: Do you think he held a grudge against Jesus? (Can't understand tape).
I don't know.
Audience: When Judas (can't understand tape)
Yeah. I think so. He never quite forgave Jesus for not getting John out of jail. Well. I think Peter and Andrew felt bad about it at the start, but they got over it -- because they loved Jesus. There wasn't anything - except for the failure to love Jesus. there was no jiggery-potpourri that was up that some of the others weren't into as well as Judas. But they loved Jesus.
Audience: And so they -
They were conspiring --
Audience: -- overcame the other things.
Sure. When the blue chips went down on the board, when the mud hit the fan. they were fir Jesus. Remember how Thomas used to belabor him? "Don't be an ass and go down there and get knocked off" -- to use modem parlance. And finally, when Jesus wouldn't budge. Thomas would say, "All right, boy, it's crazy, but the least we can do is die with him. "
Audience: Go for broke.
Yes, that would be what Thomas said
Now, at some point down the line. Lucifer became disillusioned. He was offered a chance to accept mercy. He spurned it. It says, mercy is not to be trampled underfoot ["For mercy is not to be thrust upon those who despise it; mercy is not a gift to be trampled under foot by the persistent rebels of time." (315.1)] Every time he spurned mercy, he did something to himself. He warped himself a little farther.
Audience: He retrogressed.
Retrogressed. Or went a little more crazy. And, somewhere down the line, he crossed the threshold.
Audience: To use vernacular, a while ago you said (can't understand tape) wouldn't that be a (can't understand tape).
Yeah. Certainly.
Audience: In fact, it's a horrible thought
Well, they talk about the Lucifer rebellion. They say this may not sound very much like a war to you -- two debates going on, Gabriel vs. Lucifer -- but, they say, this is a much more terrible war than anything you know anything about. You fight wars in terms of life temporal; this war was fought in terms of life eternal.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Well, you see, this is not a mawkish universe. This is a universe that is thrillingly adventurous. And you do go for broke. And you do play for keeps. It's a challenge. It's not a soft, church luncheon with chocolate cake and cocoa and everybody smiling at each other.
Audience: You (can't understand tape).
That's right. This has got as much challenge in it -- infinitely more challenge -- than a war. Or meeting an economic threat. Or standing up and being counted in any difficult situation.
Audience: It's more lasting, too, because it's forever.
Um-hum.
Audience: Well, our choice, it can be our bow line, to where it was a matter of Gabriel and Lucifer, too, to be oblivious.
Sure. And I'm mindful of what Jesus said. He told the story of the parable of the talents. I've thought about that. I've thought how lucky I have been to have this book. And to get it young, you know, when your mind is pliable. The concepts were easy to take in. I could work with them. I didn't have to work with yarn that had been knitted once, you know what I mean?
Audience: Unravel it all and start over again?
Sure. And to have aptitude to work with it. And then I thought of that parable of the talents, and I said, "Buster, you better measure up. There's no (can't understand tape). There's no privileges. The more you get, the more you're going to have to account for. "
Audience: Responsibility.
Yes. And my personal reaction is, I'm not a bit scared -- but I feel totally challenged. Totally challenged. I just think it's going to take everything I have. Otherwise--
Audience: Why shouldn't it?
Well, of course.
Audience: Do you ever get the quote (can't understand tape) grabbing over it?
No.
Audience: Laughter. (Everyone talking at once). I knew it, I knew it
Audience: That's when it hits you in the middle, and you break out in a sweat, and you think I'd better hurry.
I'll tell you what I have gotten, though. And what I want to share with as many people as I can. As I worked on this story, I tried to figure out what this book is talking about, and I've learned so much that I never knew was in here before, and that's just this year --
End of Tape.
Next: Part 4