WILLIAM S. SADLER, JR.
23 July 1960
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA
Part 8 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
Webmaster's note: These transcripts are presented here in unedited form. There are some discontinuities at points where the tape was broken and times when Bill turned off the recorder while he talked. These transcripts have not been closely edited for typos or scanning artifacts. If you are interested in improving the presentation of this material, please contact sysop@urantia-book.org
Well, I think you've got a separate center of consciousness. Here, Clyde.
Audience: Well, I'm still way down this little (can't understand tape).
Let's put it this way .. There was a time-
Audience: I'm flicking the lottery.
All right There was a time when the, let's say, the Greeks knew that they were civilized. In other words, they were conscious of their own civilization and culture. But not conscious of Chinese civilization and culture. The Chinese knew that they were civilized and cultured. But they weren't conscious of the Greeks. You had two centers of conscious civilization on the planet that weren't aware of each other.
And I think you could have independent centers of consciousness in a human being. I think the soul is a knowing reality and I think the soul knows about you. The soul is conscious of what's going on in mind and partly conscious of what the spirit is up to. But mind is not conscious--directly--of either one. Except, you know you have a soul, don't you?
Audience: We only know we have a soul because we're told so.
Yes. And when you're told that God indwells you, and you think about it, that, too, is real is it not?
Audience: Very. Very.
Yes. So we are conscious of the fact of the soul and the fact of the spirit, but we are not too particularly conscious of what they're up to.
Audience: Now, we weren't talking about "we."
You see, this is a level of consciousness, Clyde, that's above human mind. The soul has morontia mind.
Audience: All right. Get another spotlight.
The soul's got a spotlight. Up there.
Audience: I can get out of it if you give me another light.
Audience: Yeah, you got this.
Now--
Audience: I can't get out of it with the first light.
There's two lights.
Audience: That's on the podium in the middle of my head.
There's three lights.
Audience: Well, they (can't understand tape).
The Adjuster's got a spotlight of his own. There's three spotlights going up there. Well, of course, the Adjuster is light. Put it that way.
Audience: But our old (can't understand tape) everyday Friday, Saturday consciousness--
That's the spotlight.
Audience: That's the one we're working with.
Clyde, I think the only thing you can be sure of is seepage.
Audience: Beg pardon?
The only thing you can count on is seepage from topside.
Audience: Um-humm.
Now, now and then there's illumination from topside. Paul had it.
Audience: That gives us--
Audience: Well, let's put that topside inside.
I can't visualize it too easy. Do you follow me?
Audience: But it indwells us.
Admittedly, Mary Kathryn, but the image gets to be too complicated to visualize, to picture. Have three concentric circles if you want it.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
That's another way to visualize it. Except now I have trouble with my spotlight, see?
Audience: Laughter.
Audience: Our conscious light is here to here and here to here.
That's right.
Audience: All right. And this, you're going to make superconscious.
That's superconscious.
Audience: Why couldn't we level it off like this, put our soul up there, and then of course--
You could
Audience: And then of course you kind of flow down the sides (can't understand tape).
I like three circles because it's clear-cut, you see. It's easy to picture. I actually think that they are concentric. One inside the other. Like the circles on the blue book.
Audience: I had the two and two and one (can't understand tape) the whole (can't understand tape).
But if you string them out in a row, then you can see the mechanics a little better.
Audience: The tangent deal there is good too.
Tangent is a good way of looking at it.
Audience: I kind of like the (can't understand tape).
I would call the consciousness of the soul the mid-mind. It is the mind which is midway between material mind an the mind of the spirit.
Audience: I have all this trouble when you talk about mind (can't understand tape).
Audience: Our consciousness of a soul?
No.
Audience: Didn't you say (can't understand tape).
That consciousness which the soul itself has and which we ourselves are not conscious of, that is the mid-mind. That's morontia mind, Clyde. Not adjutant spirit mind. The soul's got a different mind circuit up there.
Audience: Morontial (can't understand tape).
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
This is above the mind of the seven adjutants. It's an independent ministry of mind to the soul, just like we have a ministry of mind to the cerebral cortex, which we call human mind. Partly we share that mind with the mammals, and partly with the secondary midwayers.
Audience: But there's seepage (can't understand tape).
Audience: Can't you use the word osmosis better than seepage?
Yes, osmosis is a better word.
Audience: Because seepage is always thinking of sewer, and somehow this isn't sewer (can't understand tape).
All right. Osmosis is better semantics. There's a trickle coming down from above.
Audience: Laughter.
That, to me, is one way of looking at survival or non-survival. Do you animalize yourself or do you spiritize yourself.
Audience: I think we do both. Unfortunately.
Yes. Well, which is the greater direction?
Audience: We know what we want, that's the important thing (can't understand tape) we make our choices, I think there's no question in our minds.
Each person would know that in his own heart.
Audience: I think we do.
I'll tell you what troubles me, though. I talk to so many fine people. And as nearly as I can determine, their entire conscious mind is devoted to temporal problems. Now, these are moral people. These are good people. These are hard-working people. These are loyal people. But they are unconcerned with spiritual things. They're working hard to solve a merger, to get out these debentures, to follow the stock market.
Some of them are darned intelligent folk. They're not interested in spiritual things. I occasionally probe around a little bit. And it's water off a duck's back. And I feel-- well, I take comfort in the fact that when Jesus was coming down from the Swiss lakes, he didn't cast his pearls before swine. He didn't talk to the young man..
And Ganid got after him. He said, "Rabbi, are you slipping a little?"
And Jesus said, "No. He's not a prospect, Ganid. He's not in the market for what we have to offer."
Audience: Jesus had a way of knowing. We don't.
Jesus knew. Right. We can only probe. And deduce.
Audience: That's right.
I've got a very dear friend. He's a graduate of Purdue. He's a brilliant engineer. He's a fun guy. I love to talk with Dick. He's got a big, roomy mind. He's not interested in this--and he has a blue book. He's had one for years. I gave him one. And it bothers him a little bit that I'm interested in it. Except I never bring the subject up. He occasionally will bring it up. And I'll answer any question he asks. I'm--
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Audience: You'll get to him one of these days. He'll keep nibbling. (Can't understand tape).
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Possibly. Possibly. I think the thing that intrigued him about the book more than anything else, is the fact that I'm intrigued with it.
Audience: (Can't understand tape) that's better, I mean, I know I (can't understand tape) my daughter--
Yes. He's dipped into it. I'll never forget his reaction to the signature of Paper number 1. He read that the night I gave him the book, and he--he read it out loud, and he says, "My," he says, "aren't we high and mighty."
Audience: Laughter.
Which is a very normal reaction.
Audience: A nut we have to crack is getting over who authors this book.
Audience: Who cares?
Audience: Well-(Break in tape.)
Audience: Many (can't understand tape) who have accepted this (can't understand tape).
Audience: But I went through the same as you were talking about. I think we all did (can't understand tape) without even knowing it (can't understand tape).
Bud Kagan got off a pretty good one when he said, "Music is beautiful whether you know the name of the author or not. "
Audience: That is good.
That's original, too, I think, with Bud.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
No. I stole it from. him, though.
Audience: Well, we've told everybody here about him. But we gave Bud credit for it.
Yeah. It's a very good presentation.
Audience: I didn't get to see Bud's (can't understand tape) I just found out (can't understand tape) a couple of hours (can't understand tape).
Audience: Well, we mentioned that in class several times.
Audience: Well, Bill, (can't understand tape) find the complacity of normal, aggressive minds as regards eternity when there's so damned busy with temporal things. And aggressively successful.
That's right
Audience: Temporal. (Shouting). They're not interested at all in eternity.
And we're here such a little time.
Audience: And it's just such a split second (can't understand tape) that they're working.
All of these problems which we need--believe me, they're good for us right now, where we are. And if we didn't have them, it would be like a dog with no fleas. He'd be worrying about being a dog, you know?
Audience: Laughter.
But, someday, we're going to look back on this life. We're going to see it for the kindergarten that it is. And all of our efforts are like piling up A-B-C blocks to see how high we can stack them. That's all it's going to matter. This is the--
Audience: But what about (can't understand tape).
This is the best we can do, and so we should pile A-B-C blocks.
Audience: What we do here is (can't understand tape).
I think so.
Audience: You know the show out in (can't understand tape) that I brought the (can't understand tape) home at night has been showing this week, the picture, "why must I die," and I had read it three nights, and last night, it just struck me. And I drove on up, you know, thinking, one who doesn't know that there is a God or hereafter, don't you know that death is just awful?
Oh, yes.
Audience: My.
There's only one out. And that's Stoicism.
Audience: What?
Stoicism is the only way you can cope with that. And that's not a very optimistic philosophy, but at least it's a courageous philosophy. That's the only thing that I know that will work outside of religion.
I've looked at survival. We got into quite a discussion at our last meeting in Chicago. You know, it's kind of fun having a group going in Chicago, too.
Audience: Of your own?
Audience: You just get to practice some more, don't you, Bill?
You know, we meet just like this. I get the idea from this. We meet in the Drake Hotel, once a month, and we sit around a table with green cloth on it, little pads that say the Drake instead of the Sheridan--
Audience: Laughter.
Audience: What do you do at mealtime?
We meet generally the Sunday before the first Monday.
Audience: Do you have an all-day session on Sunday?
We only have a 4-hour session.
Audience: In the afternoon.
Audience: Now, when?
It's the Sunday before the first Monday. The Executive Committee meets on the first Monday. And there's one member of that committee who's been trying to get to our meetings. And so we set the meeting the Sunday before that Monday so that--to give him a break.
Audience: I thought you met the first Sunday--it's simpler. (Everyone talking at once).
We do not meet Labor Day weekend. We skip that month. And we do not meet during the holidays. We have 10 meetings a year.
Well, we were talking about survival, and in connection with what the Papers call power-personality unification. And I'd like to tell you the story we worked out.
God is unity. There is no such thing as matter and spirit when you think about God. Because there is a "one-ness" in God which is before matter and before spirit. It's pure energy. We can't understand that until we are told how things are like at the level of the Eternal Son and the Isle of Paradise. These are the primary expressions of God. We know that Paradise is made up of a thing called" absolutum." That's the stuff of Paradise.
And if we had an ammeter-voltmeter and could plug it into absolutum, we'd get a reading. Paradise energy. It's called "monota." And if we could go over to a primary supernaphim and get her to hang on to this thing, we could take a spiritual reading. On her.
And the same ammeter-voltmeter would register Paradise Spirit. You can't tell one from the other. And the only reason you know to use different names is, if it comes from the Isle, you call it monota, and if it comes from the Son, you call it Paradise Spirit.
And this helps you understand that in God, they are one. Because one step removed from God, the only way you can tell them apart is to give them different names. As far as your ammeter-voltmeter will register, they're identical.
There's no place for mind to function as a mediator there, is there? Mind mediates the difference between matter and spirit. Mind can function on Paradise, but mind has no mediating function on Paradise.
Audience: Because there's no-
There is no difference. There's nothing to mediate. Now, in Havona, there's no question. The triata of the Havona world and the spirit of the Havona native are two entirely different things. Here you've got a definite divergence. And there is a function for mind. But there's no antagonism between Havona triata and Havona spirit. They're functionally at one.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Right. How do you come out into the superuniverses? Well, we're working at an angle, see. Out here, the events of the physical world and the hopes and desires of the spiritual world are often apparently antagonistic, aren't they? Andon and Fonta were killed by an earthquake. You have a tidal wave that wipes out the city of Lisbon. Think of all kinds of accidents that happen. The St. Louis Center that jump out the window, gravity acts on them just the same. Same foot pounds of impact.
Now, here you've got the maximum function of mind. Energy-matter has been given a head start out here in time and space. It tends to dominate the thing because it was the first organized. They built nebulae before Michael arrived. The Nebadon pre-universe had a 600 million year start when Michael showed up. He's only been here for 400 million years. Billion, I mean-pardon.
Matter-energy--well, put it this way: Spirit and mind have been handicapped. Matter-energy has been given the head start out here in the superuniverses.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
The big problem out here is, "Can spirit dominate?" As spirit dominates on Havona and on Paradise. The higher you go in levels of divinity) the more spirit dominates in any multiple-energy relationship. But out here, it's reversed. Spirit has got the problem of striving for the dominance.
Now, spirit itself is completely helpless. Spirit doesn't touch energy at any point. But mind does. Mind can whip energy in any sustained con~ because mind manipulates energy.
Audience: (can't understand tape).
Mind is conscious, and energy is not conscious. Energy has a fixed reaction pattern, and mind has creative imagination. In the last analysis, the physical universe is mind-managed and mind-operated.
So. On the deity level) you encounter your problem of power-personality synthesis. There is a spirit person of the Supreme Being in Havana. All of the activities of the Paradise-Havona personalities, particularly the Creators out here in time and space, build up into a converging power---the power of the Almighty. Sovereign power. The ability to do things, which is uniting with the Supreme Being by the presence of Supreme mind.
Let's take this right down into human experience. Mankind lives here on earth and is presented with a challenge. Of a planet. Can we subdue this planet? And man, having mind--that mind being endowed with personality, hence having creative imagination--man automatically accepts this challenge and sets out to whip his physical environment.
And what are we trying to do except to remake the planet in our image? What is a pipeline but an artery? And what is a telegraph wire but a nerve? We are setting about to reorganize this planet. We have more water in northern California than we need and we haven't got enough in southern California, so we're going to damn up rivers and redistribute the water in California on an intelligent plan. We don't like nature's "haphazard" methods.
Audience: Well, don't you think those problems have been left here for us so we would have problems?
Certainly. Yes. Agreed. Now, as mind whips matter, mind is headed up for a dead end unless mind affiliates with spirit. Because power without spirit motivation is suicidal power. And here is where personality plays a vital part. Personality has free will choice. And personality can choose to subordinate mind to spirit so that spirit finally dominates the material universe through the linkage of mind and by virtue of creature choice.
And that, to me, is another way of defining the difference between survival and non-survival.
The Papers point out in another connection, that the whole survival adventure is the adventure of the transit of mind. Mind starts out under physical dominance. The animal is a slave to his instincts. The child is pretty much a slave to his yens. And better so. A child should stuff himself when he gets hungry. And run around when he gets restless. This is safe, because a child has no wisdom.
Audience: (Can't understand tape) like my parakeet does, when he gets tired, you know.
Yeah. Exactly. Now, mind is perfectly safe when it's hooked up to the mechanical. Or it's safe when it's hooked up to the spiritual. But if it tries to go it alone, this is where mind goes down the drain. This is where Lucifer got lost. This is where Caligastia got lost. You have power, and you have no spirit identification, but you've liberated yourself from the safety of mechanical dominance.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
What?
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Yeah. Exactly.
Audience: Well, we had a good example (can't understand tape).
This, I think, is what Jesus meant when he said, "The meek shall inherit the earth." Because only the meek could keep the inheritance. Now, of course they have to be strong to start with.
Audience: The meek (can't understand tape).
But he never said that the meek weren't strong.
Audience: No, we assume it was because the way we're working (can't understand tape).
Right.
(Everyone talking at once).
I think when the strong are also meek, they will inherit the earth, and they will keep the inheritance. When the strong are not meek, they're always overthrown. Because they lack the humility which keeps people from being afraid of them. And if you're afraid of strength, you conspire against it. And, sooner or later, the conspiracy proves to be stronger than the strong.
Audience: The correlation (can't understand tape).
Yeah. This is the story of Prussia, this is the story of Assyria, this is the story of any militaristic nation.
Audience: Unfortunately, you're right
They die by the sword that they tried to live by.
Audience: They hang themselves.
Yes.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Audience: Bill, do you think that the country is becoming more materialistic?
Our country? Yes. I think our country is trying to rouse itself from intellectual sloth. We were getting awfully fat, dumb, and happy when Sputnik went up. And that was a wonderful thing for us.
Audience: I think (can't understand tape) Russia (can't understand tape).
Yes. I think 500 years from now, historians will say that the best thing that happened to America was fear of Russia. Because it put us on our toes.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Audience: How long?
Audience: 500 years from now.
I only hope that the history-
Audience: America will go down just exactly like some of the others.
Audience: It may never even have to, I mean, I'm not afraid of it, but to me, we are following apattern, I mean, we are doing a good job, so much more than any other nation.
There's one chance we have, though.
Audience: What is it, Bill?
I can draw a parallel between the United States and later Rome-with one exception. Rome had no Russia.
Audience: Nothing to--
There was nothing organized.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Nothing organized. Now, Rome was in contact with Parthia in the east. And it was a stalemate. The Parthian "cataphrags"-their male armored bowmen--could whip the Roman legions when they got them out in the desert. When the Romans would retreat, they could whip the Parthians. That was a stalemate. The Germans never could stand up to the Romans when the Romans were commanded. One of the real tragedies--I think it was old Julian, the last pagan emperor--he was raised a philosopher. And the emperor sent him up--he was his cousin-sent him up to Gaul and appointed him "Caesar," which was the number two rank. An old Julian had been reading tactics. And he reorganized the legions and for a period of about five years, he whipped those Krauts as they hadn't been whipped in a hundred years. Chased them--
Audience: They went for (can't understand tape).
So and so over kettle into the Rhine. And now what happened? He fell victim of the tragedy of Rome. The soldiers proclaimed him "Augustus." And he had to go fight the emperor. And now the frontier was exposed.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
No, the Romans lost the Rhine frontier by default. They never were conscious of another great power. Because the only thing like Rome was in China, and it was too many thousand miles away. Now, we have a stimulus that the Romans never had. We know about Russia. And someday, we may both know about China.
Audience: My question (can't understand tape) you probably know it, Bill (can't understand tape) the corporal said about China?
What?
Audience: I can't tell you verbatim, but it was beautiful, he said something about China being like a sleeping dragon better left asleep, because if it awakened, it probably (can't understand tape) I mean we've had it
Yeah.
Audience: That's the one thing that old Kruschev believes in.
Well, there's one--
Audience: That's the allied zone (can't understand tape).
There's one Russian diplomat told some American, he said, "You know, we have our differences, but if the Chinese ever really get atomic energy," he says, "we will compose those differences very quickly. "
Audience: That's beautiful.
Audience: Laughter.
Audience: (Can't understand tape) as far as we have knowledge of these things (can't understand tape).
Yes. Well, the Chinese have ability, that's all (can't understand tape). When Ghengis Khan looked the world over, and he fought successfully on two fronts, he decided to concentrate the mongol assault on China, because China was so rich, so civilized, so progressive--and Europe was such a lean picking. That was about 1200 AD.
Audience: What volume are you in now, Bill? What?
Audience: Of the 70 volumes.
What 70 volumes are there?
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Oh, there aren't 70. There's only about 30. (Everyone talking at once).
Audience: (Can't understand tape) aren't we happy to see you all.
Audience: How is your father?
Fine.
Audience: (Can't understand tape), how are you? Tum YoW" taper off
Audience: How are you?
Audience: Fine, (can't understand tape) how nice to see you.
Audience: Would you like to sit down here?
(Break in tape.)
Berk was talking about the difference between deity and God. Of course, this is word usage. The biggest word, in my conception, is the word "Reality." Capitalized. That's everything. And the word "Reality" would be roughly synonymous with the word "infinity." Or "the infinite." Or "the infinitude." Or "the infinite one. "
Reality subdivides into two categories, deity reality and non-deity reality. Simplest examples that I can give are the Isle of Paradise and the Eternal Son. The Eternal Son is the perfect expression of deity reality. Or the Second Source and Center is a better designation
The Isle of Paradise is not deity. It's thing. It's an it. It's a machine. It's an absolute machine. It's the machine which God personally built for the same reason that men build machines: to perform a repetitive, mechanical act.
Paradise is complicated. Paradise is knowing in some way. Paradise is not unconscious. But the Foreword instructs me, it's not conscious as I can ever possibly understand the meaning of that term.
Let's take the Eternal Son as an example of Deity. The Second Source and Center is the name I would apply to the deity of the Second Person of Deity. The Second Source and Center is other-than-personal as well as personal. Or gives rise to other-than-personal beings. Sustains a relationship to all the beings who are native to the worlds of the Eternal Son in the near regions of Paradise.
The word "God" is smaller than the word "deity." Now we are thinking of the personality of deity. The personality of man is not all of a functioning human being. He is a body--he has toenails, he has lenses in his eyes--do you follow me? This is the essence of the man, but not all of the man. God is the essence of the First Source and Center, but not all of the First Source and Center.
The word "Son" is an abstraction out of the word "God." Or-better still, the word "Father." This now connotes relationship of a personal God to his personal creatures.
When you think of divine personality in relation to deity, if you separate the two--or, rather, recognize you're on different levels--then you can understand "Trinity" much better. Let's take the illustration that's used in Paper 10:
Three people organize a partnership. That's an association. It's recognized in law as an association. But it's not a legal entity. You can't sue a partnership. You sue the partners. Nevertheless, a partnership is a functional grouping of these three men.
Now let's say these three men happen to be Father, Son, and Grandson. They also organize a corporation. They're equal stockholders. And they elect themselves as the three directors of that corporation. I have a name for that corporation. It's Undivided Deity, Incorporated. And that is the Paradise Trinity.
The Trinity is a corporate entity, just as a corporation is a legal entity. Now, you've got to remember that God can be in more than one place at the same time. Have you got that definite? I want you to think of Father. Son, and Grandson. They're sitting as directors of Undivided Deity, Incorporated, and they are always sitting as directors. At the same time, they are here as persons, and they are contactable as persons. And as persons, they can do business with the corporation.
Anyone or two of them can do business with the corporation as deities, but all three of them can't, because that is the corporation. The three of them have no external, collective relationship as deity to the Trinity, because the three deities together--that is the Trinity.
They also have a partnership association. That's called the First Triunity. It will help if we consider the difference in functions. Taking from the Papers: (1147)
The association of three persons, as persons, is a triunity. It is not a trinity. The three persons, or groups, can have no personal relationship to such a triunity. A triunity is a three-fold functional unanimity. A triunity is not an entity. It is a functional grouping rather than an organic reality. It's members are like partners. It is an association in contrast to a corporation. A triunity is to a trinity as function is related to structure. A triunity is a functional grouping. A trinity is a structural grouping.
The first triunity is the association of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The functions of the first triunity are the threefold union of love, mercy, and ministry. It is divinely fraternal, creature loving, fatherly acting, and ascension promoting. It's members are personality bequeathing, spirit bestowing, and mind endowing gods.
In contrast to this, the functions of the Paradise Trinity are justice administration, totality attitudes, coordinate action, and cosmic overcontrol. The Paradise Trinity appears to be concerned only with the total. Total planet, total universe, total superuniverse, total grand universe.
There's no comparison between those two functions, are there? The First Triunity has nothing to do with justice and totality. But the Paradise Trinity is the source of justice.
A Trinity is a real entity. It is not a personality, but it is a true reality. Its reality as an entity is compatible with the reality of the personalities who are together in it Trinity is deity reality. And it is more than just the adding together of the attributes of its constituent members. The functions of a Trinity cannot be deduced from an examination of the attributes of its constituent personalities.
A Trinity is not personal, but neither does it contravene personality. Trinity encompasses personality and correlates it in a collective sense with impersonal function. The personal deities have attributes. A Trinity has functions. The only personal aspect of a Trinity is the personalities of its members. But as persons, such members are not a Trinity. As a collective union, they are a Trinity. That is Trinity.
The corporative members of a Trinity can collaborate in a non- Trinity manner. But not as deity. As persons, they can collaborate as they choose. But that is not the Trinity. Only deity can become Trinity. A Trinity is always deity reality. It is never personality reality. A Trinity is always inclusive of all-encompassed deity. A Trinity is deity unity. Trinity functions always encompass deity realities. Deity realities always tend to personalize. The end results of Trinity functions, therefore, give rise to new personalizations of deity.
The binding force that holds together the structure of a Trinity, or a multiple Trinity, must be divinity--the characteristic unifying and coordinating quality of deity. We know that pattern may configure matter, mind, or spirit, or any combination of them. It can characterize personalities, identities, entities, or non-living matter. It appears as a reality because of the coexistence of personality and power. In the higher sense, pattern appears because of the coexistence of deity and energy. I think this will help you understand the Trinity.
Two objects have relationships, but if there are three or more, they eventuate a system. Such a system is something more than a relationship that has become complex. Its members are connected not by a relationship of each part to other parts, but rather by a relationship of each part to the whole. Each one of the parts has a positional value in relation to the pattern of the whole.
In a human being, it is personality that unifies the whole. And in the structure of a Trinity, it must be divinity.
It is the arrangement of the parts--their positional value--that constitutes this "the pattern of the whole" with its unpredictable factors and its superadditive qualities. A Trinity is a supersummation of its constituent parts. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And the functions of the whole are more than and other than the predictable sum of the total of the collective attributes of the parts.
To illustrate this: Let us establish the difference between a non-pattern aggregation and the pattern of a system. The simplest system requires three parts, so let us take three objects of the same size, say three pennies, and let them fall at random on a tabletop. They fall by chance, and their positions have no particular significance. No meaningful relationship. This is a chance action, and we end up with three pennies on top of the table and nothing more.
Now, let us do this all over again, but differently. We pick up the three Pennies, but this time we place them very carefully on the table. We place them in such a manner that they make a perfect triangle. We still have three pennies on top of the table. But now we also have a triangle. Each penny now has a positional value.
But this positional value is not due to the parts. It is due to the significance which the whole imparts to its members. The triangle is the gestalt. There is no English word for it. "Configuration of the whole" comes close. "Pattern of the whole" is better. But neither's quite right.
Triangularity is a quality of the whole that could not be predicted by any prior analysis of any of the parts. The appearance of such a pattern of the whole signifies mind action and purpose in imposing the pattern of a system on what would otherwise be a mere aggregation.
To me, Trinity is the gestalt of three deities in union. And I can think of no better, simple illustration than the three pennies. When you put these three pennies in the proper arrangement on the table top, you've got something you didn't have before. You have a triangle.
And you didn't create that triangle, it eventuated. And that's a good use of the word eventuate. A happening that was there all the time in potential.
Audience: Uh-huh.
Now, you have to visualize in dealing with, say, the Universal Father, he can maintain the triangle of the Trinity at the same time he can leave there and work elsewhere. He's not space-limited as we are. Or time limited.
Audience: None of the members of the Trinity are.
No. Actually, when we say the Paradise Trinity is made up of Father, Son, and Spirit, that is a misnomer. Because we should say, the Trinity is made up by the three existential deities of Paradise. It is as deities that they constitute the Trinity. And we'll go right on saying Father, Son, and Spirit because it's a good, convenient--but loose--usage of the term.
I think it's proper to say that the Supreme Being is a member of the First and Second Experiential Trinities. I don't think we would be technically correct in saying "God the Supreme" has such membership. God the Supreme is the personality, the personalization, of the Supreme Being. And his Trinity membership is as deity, not as personality.
We get a touch of this in the official and the personal relationships in life. If you had a friend who was--let's say--a federal judge, you meet him on the street and you say, "Hi, Joe." You went to school with him. But in court, you'd address him as, "Your Honor." On the street, he would reflect a personal attitude of friendship. But if he functioned as a judge with a personal attitude of friendship, he would be betraying his trust, wouldn't he? On the bench, he should meet out impartial justice regardless of whether you are plaintiff or defendant. His old school mate.
In the concept of a judge, we begin to get a little of the difference between the personal attitude of God and the justice attitude of the Trinity. Now, the Papers instruct me that Trinity justice and God's love are identical when viewed from the Paradise perspective. They also tell me that I will never be able to understand this in time and space. I'll have to take it on faith. Of course, they'd have to be identical. But they certainly don't look that way out here.
I can get the best feeling for this if you will consider a parent's attitude in relation to a child. If a parent is unwisely soft in raising the child, then that child grows up soft and is unfitted for life. So the parent is not really kind, is the parent? If the parent is really kind truly wise, then I can see where the attitude of love and the attitude of justice would come out to the same answer. This is the most loving thing that could be done for little Johnny in the long run. But you could never sell that bill of goods to Johnny at the time. You know, "this hurts me worse than it hurts you." Or have any of you ever heard that?
Audience: Laughter.
Does that help on--
Audience: Very much so, Bill.
Audience: Excuse me, I have a question. Yes.
Audience: The personality of the Supreme-Comes from the Paradise Trinity.
Audience: Is created by the Trinity.
Yes.
Audience: Is that personality-personality, or is that personality-justice?
It's the personality of the Supreme, and it's the personality the Universal Father would have had if he'd been a finite God.
Audience: It would be a different type of personality than is bestowed by the Universal Father.
I'm not so sure that he didn't give him his personality even so. I think the entity of God the Supreme came from the Trinity, but I think the Father bestowed personality upon it. The Ancients of Days were created by the Trinity. But they got their personality from God the Father. Unless the Conjoint Actor bestowed it, acting for the Father.
There's only two ways you can get personality. It's either direct from the Father, or the Infinite Spirit acting as his attorney-in-fact.
Audience: We have no records in The Urantia Book of that ever having been done, do we?
No.
Audience: It just says that he can.
That's right. And such beings are in the Father's personality circuit I think it's just as though God himself had acted. There's no difference. The Infinite Spirit is attorney-in-fact for about everyone. Including the incomplete Supreme Being. He makes up the difference on the level of actuality, just as the Universal Absolute compensates all things from his standpoint.
You think of your friend, the judge, in the back room and on the bench, and you've got a very helpful distinction between God as a person and God as deity or in the Trinity.
So when you deal with the Universal Father, you're in trouble, because you go right back into reality itself. You ponder the fact that Paradise is just as much a revelation of the First Source and Center as is the Second Source and Center. They're equal but opposite revelations of the First Source and Center. Because God is the Lord of universes as well as the Father of persons. He bosses the physical creation as well as allures the personal creation.
When they try to classify reality, they do fine--the Son, Paradise, the Spirit--absolute in actuality. Deity, Universal, Unqualified Absolutes--absolute in potentiality. The First Source and Center--now wait a minute. We better just set up a special category for him. We'll call him "the original." They won't classify him as either actual or potential. He's original. He's actual and potential. And something else besides actual and potential.
To me, the concept of the Infinite is the final concept. The Papers speak of the movements of the cosmos representing the Infinite in his eternal manipulation of the Absolutes. The Infinite, to me, is the end. This is pre-existential, post-experiential. This is before the beginning of beginnings and after the end of all endings.
When I want to find the Infinite on the level of the Absolute, I find him. He's the First Source and Center. When I want to find him in the level of divinity, he's deity. Original deity. When I want to find him at the level of personality, he's God. When I want to talk to him, he's my Father.
Now, that is why the Eternal Son is such an exquisite explanation of God. Because in the Eternal Son, we have the Father completely divorced from all that is extra-divine and undeified. The Son is a focalization of the deity and personality aspects of God. And I believe the Divine Counsellor when he says that we--all of us--understand God better when we study the Son. Because it's less complicated. This is a clear-cut, perfect, eternal, and final revelation of God who is spirit.
But there is also God who is energy. And you look at Paradise and just shake your head and say, "This also is a manifestation of God." Coordinate with the Son. Now what kind of God is this? This is incomprehensible. So you go right back to the Son when you try to understand. And then when we consider a Son of the Eternal Son, then we have God on the anthropomorphic level in the human life of Jesus. and you really can feel God.
To me, this thing starts with the Infinite, and ends with the carpenter.
From the greatest mystery to an exquisitely understandable portraiture.
But Jesus never revealed the First Source and Center. Neither did he reveal the deity of the First Source and Center. He revealed the Father. The relationship which God maintains to man. That aspect of God.
Audience: God other than deity.
Um-mmm. Look. What is God in relation to a Thought Adjuster? A Thought Adjuster is not a person, so God cannot be Father of the Thought Adjuster. What is the relationship of God to a transcendentaler who is a superperson, who was not created, who was eventuated? He's something else, isn't he? Even in the deity side, there are relationships which are other-than-father, but not other-than-divine. Not other-than-deity. But when you look to Paradise and the material universes, now you're looking at relationships which are extra-divine and undeified.
And of course, when you conceive of God as the Infinite, he encompasses the seven Absolutes.
I think one good way of looking at this is a symbolization of the sevenfold relationships of the I AM that they give in, I think, the Paper on "Deity and Reality. "
Think of a cube. Let's get a good, nice, wieldy cube, you know. It's big. It's got six sides, hasn't it? I think of each of these six faces of the cube as symbolizing the First Source and Center in relationship to one of the six Absolutes. And the seventh face is internal. It's the relationship of the First Source and Center to himself. Remember, it starts out, and it says, "I AM Father of the Eternal Son. "
(End of Tape #1.)
Tape 2:
We're going to identify these facets, now. I'd be smart if I get this over--I might boggle number six. A few of them. Better I look it up than prove I don't remember.
Audience: You sound like you fall off a (can't understand tape).
Well, I think I would have on this one.
"I AM Father of the Eternal Son."
That's one facet. That's his relationship to the Son.
"I AM cause of eternal Paradise. "
That's his relationship to the Isle.
"I AM one with the Eternal Son. "
That's his relationship with the Conjoint Actor.
"I AM self-associative. "
That's his relationship with the Universal Absolute.
"I AM self-qualified "
His relationship to the Deity Absolute.
"I AM static-reactive. "
His relationship to the Universal Absolute. Now we've used up the six sides. Now, the last relationship is internal.
"I AM as I AM. "
His relationship to himself.
As they go on to say, this is the stasis or self-relationship of Infinity, the eternal fact of infinity-reality and the universal truth of reality-infinity.
Insofar as this relationship is discernable as personality, it is revealed to the universes in the divine Father of all personality-even of absolute personality.
Insofar as this relationship is impersonally expressible, it is contacted by the universes as the absolute coherence of pure energy and pure spirit in the presence of the Universal Father.
Insofar as this relationship is conceivable as an absolute, it is revealed in the primacy of the First Source and Center. In him we all live and move and have our being, from the creature of space to the citizen of Paradise. And this is just as true of the Master Universe as of the infinitesimal ultimaton. Just as true of what is to be, as that which is, and of what has been. In other words: This is large.
Audience: That's incredible ...
Audience: Laughter.
This is quite large.
Audience: Beau coup.
Right. Now, I visualize this cube. I see these six relationships. I see, if you please, six spheres--you know, each one facing one of the facets of the cube. But then, I can circumscribe that whole pattern with a circle. That's the Infinite. That's the Infinite. That's my symbolization of the Infinite.
And, if I could ever find the Infinite, I would discover he is the Father-Infinite. This I will never do. This is not doable.
But I think we'll know the Father as Absolute, partially.
I think we'll understand the Father as finite. Because we'll understand the Supreme Being.
I think we will someday understand the Father as absonite, because someday--believe it or not--we're going to understand God the Ultimate.
I think we will get to know the Father-Absolute, but never understand him.
And, I can't improve an what the Universal Censor growls out at us in the last sentence in Paper number 10: "Only infinity could disclose the Father-Infinite." You can't get there from here. But you can keep trying.
Audience: We talked about that the last time.
Yeah.
Break in tape.
... Excited at one of these football games when it's the top of the 9th and two out. And the score's tied.
Audience: Laughter.
Audience: I can stand about 35 points (can't understand tape).
Audience: I would like to know how we can get more of that big--
Break in tape.
[See Appendices to a Study of the Master Universe. by William S. Sadler, Jr., Table of Contents]
Master Universe Antecedents
Relationship to Paradise and the Master Universe
Space Levels of the Master Universe
The Universe Ages
Universe Ages and the Levels of Total Deity Function.
That's what I read you from this morning.
Associations of Dual-Deity
Transformative Techniques
Don't ask for that, it's not written.
Fourth Creatures
Mechanisms of Experiential Growth
The First Experiential Trinity
The Past-Supreme Ages
Future Expansion of God the Sevenfold
Evolution of Universe Sons and Spirits
Expanding Influence of the Master Spirits
Numbers and the Architects of the Master Universe
Space and Mass Magnitudes of the Master Universe
Time Magnitudes of the Master Universe
The Nature of God the Ultimate
The Second Experiential Trinity
The Post-Ultimate Age
The Cosmos- Infinite
Power-Personality Synthesis
The Trinity of Trinities
An Extension of the Levels of Total Deity Function
I read you the Introduction of that. The balance of these haven't been written:
The Nature of the Deity Absolute
The Nature of the Unqualified Absolute
The Nature of the Universal Absolute
The Concept of the Infinite
These are 28 essays.
Audience: I'd like to hear some discussion, personally, on growth and the power of personality, myself.
All right. Why don't we take a look at "The Mechanisms of Experiential Growth." Do you want me to tape this, and then we'll discuss it?
Audience: Yes.
All right.
Audience: You're already on.
This is the 9th Appendix, entitled "The Mechanisms of Experiential Growth. "
As we pass from the age of Havona to the present universe age, there's a change in the growth potential of the central universe. In the first age, Havona was entirely non-evolutionary, non-growing.
In the second age, Havona certainly has the evolutionary ear-marks of association with the superuniverses. How did this came about? If we can understand this change, then we can better forecast what may happen in the Grand Universe when the second age ends and we enter upon the ages of the outer universes. These future ages will be characterized by a growth process that is post-Supreme in nature.
Section 1: The Sources of Growth: Original, Actual, and Potential.
There are quite a number of ways of classifying the Seven Absolutes of Infinity. (page 5, paragraph 1-7). One of these ways is to put them in three categories: Original, Actual, and Potential. And we are informed that the interaction of these three accounts far growth on all levels: Sevenfold, Supreme, and Ultimate. (page 1262, paragraph 6).
The Papers have much to say about these classifications. First of all, the Original is defined as:
(page 1262, paragraph 3) The First Source and Center, the source from which all reality takes origin.
(paragraph 8) That which is a time concept
(paragraph 9) That which balances all the outgoing and the incoming motions of growth.
Secondly, the Actual is defined as:
(page 1262, paragraph 4) The three Absolutes of actuality: the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and the Isle of Paradise.
(page 1151, paragraph 3-7) The Triodity of Actuality: Son, Spirit, and Paradise. The total of all actualized reality: matter, mind, and spirit.
(page 1262, paragraph 7) The Triodity in which actuality is absolute. Potentials are emergent.
(page 131, paragraph 3) The gravity control of spirit, mind, and matter, centering respectively in the Son, the Spirit, and the Isle of Paradise.
(page 1262, paragraph 8) Actuals are defined as that which was and which is. This is the time concept of actuals.
(Paragraph 9) Actuality is substance. It is existence at the center and is expanding out into infinity at the periphery.
Thirdly, the potential is defined as:
(page 1262, paragraph 5) The three absolutes of potentiality: the Deity Absolute, the Unqualified Absolute, and the Universal Absolute.
(page 1151, paragraphs 8-12) The triodity of potentiality. The association of the three absolutes: Deity, Unqualified, and Universal. The sum total of the unlimited reservoirs of unexpressed energy--spiritual, mindal, or cosmic energy. In potential it is infinite.
(1262, paragraph 7-9) The triodity in which potentials are absolute, and actuals are emerging.
Potentials are defined as that which is becoming, and which will be. This is the time concept. Potentiality is capacity. It is incoming from peripheral infinity, and is converging at the center of all things.
Growth, whether creative or evolutional, is not a process of getting something for nothing. It is a matter of the interchange of reality from the potential level of existence to the actual level of existence. An interchange between the potential and the actual in the presence of the original.
Concerning these transactions, the Papers say:
(page 83, paragraph 4) Spirit emerges from the potential of the Deity Absolute. It evolves in conjunction with the Supreme and the Ultimate and is finally grasped by the spirit gravity circuit of the Eternal Son.
(page 9, paragraph 8-9) Cosmic force emerges from the space presence of the Unqualified Absolute and becomes subject to the absolute gravity grasp of Paradise. In the intermediate stages of gravity, it is influenced by the Ultimate and by the Supreme.
(page 1263, paragraph 3) The final dynamics of the cosmos have to do with the continual transfer of reality from potentiality to actuality.
We have here a reasonably clear picture of the mechanisms of growth in terms of source and destiny. All new things--physical, spiritual, or mindal--emerge from the potential by a creative or an evolutional process and eventually are grasped by some one or more of the gravity circuits centering in the actual. This statement is true for purposes of this particular discussion, but there are more than two creative and evolutional transformative processes.
Section 2: The Maturation of Potentials.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Maturation. Bringing to maturity. Growth in the Master Universe is a sub absolute process. It is taking place on the finite level in time and space and on the absonite level in transcended time and space. This means that something has to operate on the potentials the Absolutes in order to down-step them to the point where they can be handled on sub-absolute levels and by sub-absolute beings.
(page 262, paragraph 10) The potential, the absolutes, never functions as such on sub-absolute levels.
(page 136, paragraph 4) The presence-performance of the absolutes an the activities of the ultimate always precede the work of the time-space creators.
(page 137, paragraph 3) Within the Master Universe, the Ultimate is working out the creative organization of the Absolutes of potentiality.
(page 1281, paragraph 5) The Supreme is the channel that carries the creative potential of the Triodities, and this is the stuff out of which the superuniverses and their native beings are created.
Audience: What (can't understand tape) are you on?
(page 1296, paragraph 7) Creators really are transformative creators.
(page 1261, paragraph 3-4) Experiential creation and evolution is the conversion of potentialities into actualities, and this equally applies to the potency of spirit to space potency or to mind potency.
We can now elaborate our concept of the mechanisms of experiential growth. The basic potentials are absolute and must become subabsolute before they can be utilized on absonite and on finite levels of existence. This modification of absolute potentials is the work of the Ultimate and the Supreme, and when they have completed their work, then such modified potentials are serviceable to the Creators and controllers of the time-space universes.
In the larger sense, an act of creation is an act of transformation. The transformation of a matured potential into a bone fide actual.
An illustration of this. We are informed (page 418, paragraph 4) that our local universe Creative Spirit may create Seraphim in unit formation--41,472 at a time. As we picture this episode, at one moment, there are no such Seraphim. At the next moment, there they are. All 41,472 of them.
But they did not come from nothing or nowhere. They came-emerged--from something that was somewhere. The something was a matured potential. And the somewhere must have been the presence of the Supreme.
Just in case this seems altogether simple and clear, we can complicate it just a little.
Audience: Laughter.
The Infinite Spirit and the Master Spirits are in someway involved in some parts of this transformative process (page 469, paragraph 8 and Page 190, paragraph 5-6). This is true at least as concerns the maturation of physical force into emergent energy and then to the level of universe power.
Section 3: The Conditioning of Growth by Experiential Deity.
Experiential Deity does something more than simply mature the absolute potentials of growth to those subabsolute levels on which such potentials are serviceable to the Creators and Organizers of Universes.
In this process, the experiential deities impart their respective natures to such matured potentials. These matured potentials are existent within the presences of experiential deity. The Master Universe space presence, omnipresence of the Ultimate (page 1296, paragraph 4). And the Grand Universe ubiquity, multipresence of the Supreme (page 1296, paragraph 6).
(page 1263, paragraph 2) The actual triodity serves as the center of all actualized existence. In the finite realms it functions in and upon the Ultimate as he is conditioned by the Supreme.
(page 1264, paragraph 5) The actual and the potential triodities appear on the finite level in conjunction with the Supreme. They so appear by both direct and indirect techniques. They are manifest by direct repercussion in the Supreme and by indirect derivation through the Absonite.
(page 1283, paragraph 2) Man was not created by the Supreme, but the potentiality of the Supreme provided the wherewithal out of which man emerged.
Finite creatures have their existence within the Supreme Being. It appears that the nature of the Supreme not only makes possible the growth of finite creatures, but in turn determines the nature of such creatures. They become like the Supreme.
This is even more understandable when we consider the conditioning of the growth process within a given superuniverse. Each of the superuniverses is dominated by the Master Spirit of jurisdiction The unique nature of this supervising spirit so permeates the superuniverse concerned that all native life will ever bear this badge of natal distinction. This is true because each Master Spirit actually pervades his superuniverse. (page 190, Section 5).
In like manner, the Supreme is conditioning all growth in the Grand Universe, and so will the Ultimate in turn condition growth in the Master Universe of the ages to come.
SECTION 4
GROWTH OF THE SUPREME, GROWTH IN THE 2ND AGE
If we examine certain statements made in the Papers, we may clarify our thinking concerning the origin, functions, growth, and unification of the Supreme Being.
Page 1151, paragraph 13: The actual and the potential triodities are concerned directly in the growth and appearance of the experiential deity.
Page 1265, paragraph 6: The Supreme is in motion intensively toward the actuals at the center and extensively toward the potentials at the periphery.
Page 1264, paragraph 2: God the Supreme as a spirit person derives from the Paradise Trinity. The growth of the Supreme derives from the actual and the potential Triodities.
Page 1304, paragraph 4: In functions, the Almighty is related to the Paradise Trinity. In growth, the Almighty centers on the actual and predicates on the potential.
Page 1264, paragraph 7: The growth of Supremacy depends on the actual and the potential Triodities, but the power of the Almighty depends on the successes of God the Sevenfold.
The synthesis of Almighty Power with the spirit person of the Supreme is by the action of the Supreme mind, which was bestowed by the Infinite Spirit.
The Supreme derives his spirit person from the Trinity, and his Almighty power from the Sevenfold. And these are being united by the Supreme mind. His acts are related to Trinity functions. But the actual stuff out of which and with which he is growing is derived from the Absolute potential and is based on the Absolute actual. From nothing comes only nothing.
We may properly deduce that all of the growth that is characteristic of the second age is due to the incompleteness of the Supreme and to the fact that we are participating in and contributing to his growth.
Page 1281, paragraph 2-3: Finite experience within perfect choice is possible only because we are participants in the growth of Supremacy.
Page 1300, paragraph 8: Error in finite choosing is time-bound and time-limited. It can exist only in time and within the evolving presence of the Supreme. This type of growth, growth in and with the Supreme is peculiar to the second age. It began when the Supreme began to grow. It will end when his growth has come to an end.
Page 1264, paragraph 6: Total finite reality--and this is Supreme reality--is growing dynamically between the Absolutes of potentiality and outer space and the Absolutes of actuality at the Paradise center.
Page 353, paragraph 8: Sometime the Supreme will have completed his growth, and the chance to be a participant in this experience will be forever gone.
Does the growth pattern of the evolving Supreme completely pervade the grand universe with no exceptions? The answer to this question is, "No."
Audience: What?
SECTION 5
GROWTH: PAST,PRESENT, AND FUTURE
The Papers tell us (page 1280, section 2) that the present inhabitants of the grand universe classify into three major groups as they are related to the typical evolutionary growth of the second age.
Group I: Status as of the previous universe age. These persons include the Trinity Origin beings, like the Stationary Sons of the Trinity together with some of their Trinity-based associates. These beings are outside the sphere of evolutionary growth. Divine Counsellors do not grow, neither do Mighty Messengers.
Group 2: Status as of the present universe age. These are creatures like human beings, beings who are typical of the present age, and who are participating in the evolutionary growth of the Supreme.
Group 3: Status as of the future universe ages. Beings in this category include the Creature- Trinitized Sons. They are non-growing in the present age, because they are being held in reserve for the post-Supreme growth of the future ages.
Page 251, paragraphs 1-4; page 253, paragraph 2.
This is a picture of the overlap of three growth techniques. The first age: the age of non-growing Havona perfection.
The second age: the age of the finite and evolutionary growth of the Supreme Being.
And the third age beings: beings who are non-growing because they are not in the Supreme in the sense of sharing his growth. Beings who are being held in reserve in order to participate in the post-Supreme growth of the outer universes.
SECTION 6
POST-SUPREME GROWTH, GROWTH IN THE OUTER UNIVERSES
We may go back to recapitulate our study of the relation of the Actual and the Potential Triodities in relation to the transcendental domains of the Ultimate. We know that the Actual functions in and upon the Ultimate, that the Potential is manifest with the Ultimate, and that both Triodities are concerned with the appearance of experiential Deity, including the Ultimate. We may, however, take note of an important difference.
Page 1261, paragraphs 3-4: Experiential creation and evolution is, in essence, the conversion of potentialities into actualities. This is accomplished by experiential evolution in the finite, and experiential eventuation in the absonite.
The point to be noted is this: The principle of growth is the same, but the finite technique is different from the absonite technique. In the finite, it is experiential evolution. In the absonite, it is experiential eventuation. We know what post-Supreme growth will not be like. It will not be like the kind of growth that characterizes the present universes. That kind of growth is a part of the Supreme, and it will stop when he stops growing, when he's finally emerged. (page 1280, paragraph 6).
When the growth of Supremacy comes to an end, what will post-Supreme growth be like? We are informed that:
Page 353, paragraph 7: Outer space citizens will be deficient in one very important quality: finite experience.
Page 1280, paragraph 7: They will have a post-Supreme capacity for growth which will be based in the fact of the completed Supreme Being and will accordingly be non-participating in the growth of the Supreme.
Page 10, paragraphs 9-10: Post-Supreme growth will be experiential in nature.
Page 13, paragraph 3: It will evolutionary-eventuational in nature. God the Ultimate is now evolving.
Page 12, paragraph 6: It may be some type of eventuational growth. The Ultimate is super-Supreme eventuation of Deity.
But we still do not know what post-Supreme growth will be like. We'd probably find it just as difficult to visualize post-Supreme growth as did a Havona native who might have tried to conceive of evolutionary growth prior to the arrival of Grandfanda in the Central Universe. Neither we nor the Havoner can actually think outside the concept-frames inherent in our respective experiences. The Havoner probably had to meet the mortal ascenders in order to be able to conceive that such creatures could actually exist. And we will probably have to meet the outer-spacers in order to be able to conceive of them .
We can, however, be sure of one thing. Post-Supreme growth will be something entirely new in the universes. It will not be anything like anything that has ever happened in the first or the second age. We cannot visualize post-Supreme growth, but we can take inventory of the potentials that will be operative in the outer space regions. These would logically embrace the following: Post-finite, post-Supreme, tertiary Supreme, Absonite, Transcendental, Ultimate, and pre-Absolute.
Growth in the outer universes will have a meaning for finaliters and undoubtedly for their colleagues as well. The Papers state:
Page 1226, paragraph 4: Urantia mortals have a type of personality that contains three dimensions of self-expression or person-realization that are realizable on the Absonite level.
Our growth in the Supreme has nothing to do with the realization of the first three and prior dimensions of personality, and our post-Supreme growth will have to do with the opening up of these three additional dimensions, dimensions for which there is no possible expression in this present age of the evolutionary growth of the Supreme Being.
SECTION 7
POST-ULTIMATE GROWTH
What will growth be like after the emergence of God the Ultimate? After the completion of the whole Master Universe? The Papers have the following to say:
Page 4, paragraph 12: Post-Ultimate growth is something that must take place beyond creative levels. The Ultimate is presented as the final creative level of Deity-reality.
Page 4, paragraph 13: If growth is to continue beyond the creative level, then it would have to be some form of supercreative growth.
Page 4, paragraphs 12-13: Post-Supreme or Ultimate growth is something that has to do with superpersonal values. Post-Ultimate growth has to do with values and divinity meanings that are transcended superpersona1.
Page 2, paragraph 13-14: Post-Supreme or Ultimate growth takes place on the absonite level. Here time and space are transcended. Beyond this level, on the post-Ultimate level, the status would be timeless and spaceless--Absolute.
Post-Supreme growth is difficult enough to imagine. Post-Ultimate growth is just about impossible. Nevertheless, the finaliters are likely to find that they are to become involved in this kind of growth sometime in the very remote future. Consider the statements:
Page 1237, paragraph 4: Among other things, fusion with the Thought Adjuster adds a phase of qualified potential absoluteness.
Page 1226, paragraph 14: Urantia mortals have a type of personality bestowed upon them that contains a seventh and Supreme dimension, that is an associable absolute, and, though it is not infinite, it still has the potential for sub-infinite penetration of the Absolute.
Page 1169, paragraph 4: Mortals have a potential destiny that is absolute in value.
Turn it off, Berk.
Break in tape.
. . . especially fathers, because mothers have a mammalian love, too, which fathers don't know anything about. Fathers love their children because they see the man in the boy and the woman that's in the girl. We see the potentials there. That's the best thing I can use to illustrate how human beings think outside of time.
One of the reasons parents, I think, are intemperate in relation to their children--they see their own weaknesses in the children, know how expensive they've been, and are totally emotional and, completely unwise in their reaction to these weaknesses in the kids.
Audience: Could be.
I speak forlornly as a parent who's failed in that area.
Audience: Are you speaking to Mrs. Wilson now?
Audience: Laughter.
I said "parents."
Audience: Laughter.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
As you progress in the universes, something stops so that something else can start. Each time you take a step forward, you leave something behind for good.
Audience: You've completed it.
Right. There'll never be another universe like Havona which is inherently perfect. ~
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
You only need one. Why have more than seven superuniverses? They're big enough.
Audience: For the time being.
For the time being. In outer space, we don't start with finite imperfection, we start out with absonite incompletion. I'm not so sure the word imperfection is proper out there. The word "incomplete," I'm sure, is proper.
Audience: How do you translate that?
Audience: Why do you think that is, Bill?
Imperfect? Absonites are kind of high up, to me. I can think of an absonite --
Audience: Well, I mean, but why in outer space will it be absonite instead of--
Finite?
Audience: You don't (can't understand tape).
When the Supreme Being stops growing, finite experience is all over.
Audience: That's over with.
Yes. He's used it all up. And he can use it up, because it's limited, it's finite. You can come to an end of the finite. You can come to the end of an absonite, too, but it takes a lot longer.
Audience: Where do you find that, Bill?
What?
Audience: Where did you find that?
That finite experience is allover?
Audience: Yes (can't understand tape).
I can find it in here quicker.
Audience: Let's see, (can't understand tape).
Page 353, paragraph 8.
Audience: Well, I got to paragraph 7, so I guess I was doing good.
Yeah. That's probably the tail end of the corps of the finality.
Audience: Bill, let me ask you something. Would the actual
One more. Yeah?
Audience: --be constantly feeding into the potential?
No, the other way around.
Audience: The other way round, Berk.
Audience: Oh, I know it's the other way around, but what's going to keep it from getting lop-sided?
Because the potentials are infinite.
Audience: Potentials are without depth, or--
Audience: Everything's trying to become an actual.
Yeah.
Audience: We're all trying to actualize. Everything.
That's right. Non-survival is a reverse (can't understand tape) motion. Retrograde motion.
Audience: But as to the first reaching out, the first pitching of the ball, there'll be no more pitching.
Doesn't have to be. It was an infinite throw.
Audience: The potential is infinite, I'm afraid.
Audience: It's never going to draw (can't understand tape), anyway.
Audience: Bottomless. You've heard of the bottomless lake.
Audience: I know it's a bottomless well.
Audience: You can always get another bucket of water. I've got a--
Audience: I sure would like actuals to give a little more back-
Audience: Laughter.
I've got a--
Audience: Bill?
Well, actually, they're encircuited. See if I can find this thing in here. I've got just enough stuff here-
Audience: You don't (can't understand tape) so many actuals (can't understand tape) the Master Universe.
Yeah. It will be very small. Compared to the cosmos infinite. It will be just a kernel, Berk.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Just a kernel.
Audience: Still working on about one tenth of the first one per cent of our potential.
Audience: Looks like you'll be able to wait, then, doesn't it?
Audience: One tenth of one tenth of one tenth (can't understand tape).
Audience: What's one tenth of anything potential? You can't circumscribe it.
Audience: (Can't understand tape). (Everyone talking at once).
Audience: You're not going to worry about actions giving something back, now, are you?
Audience: Well. I'd like to pitch that ball out.
You know. I've got so darn much stuff here now. I'm not too sure which (can't understand tape).
Audience: Berk-
I've got to learn what I've got here, now.
Audience: If (can't understand tape) just had the book a week, she could tell us.
Audience: Wilma, (can't understand tape).
Audience: Laughter.
Audience: Thank you, Wilma.
Audience: (Everyone talking at once).
Unless I planned it. How about that. Hum. I used the expression, because it fit. We're up against a situation where we have the irresistible force of an absolute Trinity coming up against the immovable infinity of the three original Absolutes.
Audience: Yes.
Well, what happened here, see?
Audience: Well, what do you think?
Partial penetration. Qualitative penetration.
Audience: In other words. going together (can't understand tape)--
A compromise. Infinity resists quantitatively and gives qualitatively.
Audience: It couldn't do anything else, could it?
No, not unless you hit a stone wall. And you don't hit stone walls.
Audience: You can't hit stone walls in this thing.
The Father figured out that--
Audience: We can't even goof it up, really.
The Father set the pattern in the beginning. He starts out in what looks like a stasis. An immobility. Now, if he could break loose from infinity, they'll find ways and means of taking that hurdle at the tail end. From a qualitative standpoint, not quantitatively.
Audience: I think they already have one.
What?
Audience: They probably know (can't understand tape) anyway.
Well, of course, to the Universal Father, all this IS.
Audience: It means everything that is, period.
Yes. It is, now. There is no past or future. To God.
Audience: Everything is now.
Is now. Now in the Supreme Being, he knows the past, present, future. He's hooked into the Supreme. He shares in the consciousness of the Supreme. And so he has a complete experience of birth, growth, and destiny. As deity.
Audience: Again, it's the difference between God and Deity.
Yes. Through the Thought Adjuster. he participates in human experience. Through a Creator Son, he participates in local universe evolution. Through the Master Spirits-See, all of these different levels of consciousness are available to God. And I think this is how he is enriching his self-realization.
Audience: And that's what this whole thing is.
God can't change the values of things, because all values are infinite. And they were all here to begin with. How can he add to value? But he can change meaning. Value can be transformed from actual to potential. But you can't increase or decrease the sum total of an infinite cosmos.
Audience: It is infinite (can't understand tape).
It's always been. But you can change the relationships within that cosmos. As far as the Father Absolute is concerned, the seraphim are just as real the moment before creation as they are afterwards. But that sure is not true on a sub-absolute level. And, of course, to those who are standing by and looking, they came into being out of apparent nothingness.
Where does your soul come from?
Audience: Nothing.
It's a reality, and it's growing. It's an embryo. It's got stuff in it, morontia stuff. That stuff comes from somewhere. It doesn't come from nowhere.
Audience: No.
Right. The wine that was poured out at Cana came from somewhere. And, of course, this required actual physical assembly of water, chemical elements, and--evidently--they had some pretty good organic chemists.
Audience: Laughter.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Yeah. Because it was pretty good vintage wine. Better than they had at the beginning of the feast.
Audience: All potentials have to work through the Ultimate to get to the Supreme.
I think so. Then they're available for use.
Audience: What was that, Berk?
Potentials have to work through the Ultimate to get to the Supreme. I think that is partly true, although I think the Triodities also may hit the Supreme direct. There's a suggestion they work both ways. Practically speaking, I think of them as coming through the Ultimate.
Audience: (Can't understand tape) not necessarily have to.
Potentials, I think, descend through the Ultimate to the Supreme, to become finite actuals. And then, with the Supreme, return to the Ultimate as actuals in an effort to penetrate the Absolute. There's your cycle.
Audience: Yes. Is that a figure of speech where they refer to the actuals being on Paradise and the potentials being in outer space?
Partly figurative and partly literal.
Audience: Of course, the Universal and Qualified Absolute, I mean, you think of--
Yes.
Audience: Space presence.
Well, where is the greatest amount of creation going on? Probably out here. And will be in the first outer space levels someday. And is always moving spaceward, away from Paradise. But when the potential becomes actual, then it seeks for Paradise coherence and becomes subject to some form of gravity centering in Paradise.
Audience: Didn't you state that (can't understand tape) necessarily mean it would be working through--
No. There's some poetry in there, too.
Audience: Completes the cycle (can't understand tape).
Let me show you a cycle of a physical nature, here. Let's take a look at page 469, where they give you this big sweep of energy. This starts out with space potency, which is referred to as "absoluta." Now, to me, that's very interesting. They give it the feminine Latin ending of a noun, in contrast to the stuff of Paradise, which is given the neuter ending of a Latin noun, "absolutum." No, I guess that's masculine, isn't it? Which is it? Yeah. "UM" is neuter.
End of Side A.
This starts out as "absoluta" and then becomes "segregata." To me, that means, "that which has been segregated" from that which is pre-segregated, or undiffused space potency. And I think there's just one person who's got a crow bar big enough to pry something out of the Unqualified Absolute. And that's the Conjoint Actor.
Your next designation is "ultimata." And, to me, this whole field of emergent energy represents the activity of the Ultimate. You've also got the Master Spirits in there, too.
Your next level is ''gravita.'' Here is where linear gravity takes over. And this is the domain of the Supreme. The domain of Power Directors. So far, we've been coming down, haven't we?
And now we start back up again. "Triata," Trinity-origin energy. "Tranosta," transcendental energy. ''Monota,'' Absolute energy again.
You start with the absolute of energy potential, and you wind up with the absolute of energy actual.
And, I believe, if we had better words and better understanding, this could be done for spirit, and this could be done for mind. But I just think that's beyond our conception.
Audience: Potentials into actuals?
Yes. When a Creative Spirit generates mind, whence comes this mind? It comes from something. It comes from the potential for mind present in the grand universe presence of the Supreme. Here's where she gets the flax that she weaves into the thread out of which she manufactures the fabric of mind.
The spirit natures of these seraphim come, again, from a floating spirit potential in the local universe. And, to say that a being is a creator, all you're saying is, "This being has the tools and the equipment which enables him to reach into potentials directly and pull them out. "
Human beings have limited powers of creativity. The personality is relatively creative. The Adjuster is relatively creative. What is manufacturing this soul? But the personal mind and the Adjuster jointly are able--in a limited way--to reach into this same drawer called "potentials" and get morontia reality and weave it into this soul.
Audience: Where are you going to get the potentials for mind?
It's here.
Audience: The Infinite Spirit? The Actual?
No, I think the Supreme Mind. I think.
Audience: But the Supreme Mind would still be the Infinite, too.
Right. But I think the possibility for finite mind is present here in the Grand Universe. And before that mind exists, it's potential was still here. Put it this way. On the human level, the possibility for the unborn next generation is right here, isn't it? Now, we don't know what they're going to be like, but we know that they're possible. So that's another way of saying the next generation is potential in the germ plasm of the living generation. (Can't understand tape). It just hasn't been expressed yet.
Audience: (Can't understand tape). Everything (can't understand tape) Universal (can't understand tape) would in any way have mind potential.
They're a little silent on the subject of mind. They speak much more freely about matter and spirit.
Audience: I didn't remember anything--
Audience: What is mind, Bill?
I don't know. Any more than I know what ''personality'' is, or "life" is. We don't know any of these basics. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary starts out by defining "personality" as, "quality or state of being personal." There's one with its tail in its mouth. That's no definition.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Yeah.
Audience: You can't describe it. You can only feel it, or be (can't understand tape) by it.
Right. In the Paper on personality survival--I think it's 116--they inventory the functions of personality. But that's not a definition of personality.
Audience: (Can't understand tape) like happiness being a state of mind (can't understand tape) depends on whose mind you're in and what state you're in.
Yeah. That's right.
Audience: That's real accurate.
Like the guy who lived the life of Riley, and it was hell when Riley came home.
Audience: Well, Riley started it.
Audience: Laughter.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
To me, growth is nothing but taking advantage of the possibilities that are present. And that includes the potentiality for the present. And the Papers tell us how we should grow. We start out with "sincerity, sincerity, and more sincerity." These are the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and all men have these keys. And we make progress in the kingdom "by decisions, by decisions, and by more decisions."
And if you are sincere, and if you've got courage, you'll learn. And if you start out in total error--and chances are, we do--we'll profit by our mistakes. And, little by little, by the cut and try method, we will have less error in our plans. And that, to me, is part of the answer to that statement in the scripture, that "all things work together for good." But there's condition attached to that. And the condition is, "to those who know God and desire to do his will." Isn't that it?
You see, you're trying. And if you're trying to do this, then you are moving with the mass momentum of creation. You are attempting to work with the grain of evolution. And if you're not trying to do this, you are bucking the tide of Providence.
Audience: Well, don't you think a man must first be aware of his own potential in creation--whether it might be intellect or whatever it might be--before he can get a hold of the thing and do much with it?
Except this. Spirit can operate in the absence of intellectual insight. And this is what makes it so darn fair. It short-circuits all I.Q. The Alpheus twins--and, Lord knows, they would have flunked the (can't Understand tape)-Wassermann test--
Audience: Laughter.
The Alpheus twins were able to do this with love. The Alpheus twins loved Jesus. And they were right on the beam without thinking it through at all. They felt it. And it worked for them.
And Judas Iscariot, who had a pretty good I.Q. and a pretty good education, dropped the ball. If it were brains alone, Caligastia rated as one of the more brilliant Lanonandeks and so did Lucifer.
Audience: So it's more what's in your heart.
Now, if you can add brains to spirit direction, then you've got leadership. This is what Van had. Then you've got a rallying point. Van was as true as Amadon, and Van was smart besides. And Van stood up and read off the Planetary Prince and Lucifer. Then you've got something tremendous.
Audience: It must come from love, though.
It starts with love. It starts with sincerity. And then you have courage.
Audience: Bill, is love greater than faith?
Oh, yes. Much, I think.
Audience: (Everyone talking at once). Laughter.
Audience: Isn't love faith?
Love is the greatest thing of all.
Audience: Love is the whole--
Love is the source of faith, I think.
Audience: Speaking of Jesus' apostles, the last time we studied with this class (can't understand tape) it struck me how he took just, just took them as they came, you might say. Just like you walk down the street and tap this one and that one. He selected 2 or 3, the rest of them came through those to him.
Right.
Audience: He accepted them. There is no record of any rejection.
When you come right down to it, he selected no one. They all came to him.
Audience: But didn't he select Peter?
No. Andrew selected Peter. He brought him to Jesus. Andrew selected Jesus.
Audience: Andrew was the first one.
Then Andrew selected Peter.
Audience: Well, didn't--
James and John came to Jesus.
Audience: --it say how Andrew happened to come?
He came of his own initiative.
Audience: Andrew?
Audience: Wasn't he the one who had the loot?
Matthew.
Audience: That was Matthew.
Audience: Matthew had the loot.
Audience: Laughter.
Now, Andrew came to Jesus, and then-
Audience: Historic.
Sure. And then Andrew brought Peter. And that evening James and John came down.
Audience: (Can't understand tape) hot coffee. (Everyone talking at once).
Audience: Wilma, do you want some coffee?
Audience: No, hon, thank you, I don't.
Audience: I think I'll take a little coffee, Berk, just a little.
When you come right down to it, Jesus did not actually choose one of those 12. They chose themselves. Or they were chosen by one of the 12.
Audience: How would you like to go out here and start to get a company together?
Audience: Like (can't understand tape).
Audience: And just take whoever volunteered? And try to work with them?
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
Well, you'd have to be someone like Jesus to make it work
Audience: Everybody wants to be chief, no Indians.
Yes.
Audience: Well, I'd say the greatest defeat of any company, trying to work with a company, is our own ego gets in our way, instead of the source of what we're working to.
Audience: (Can't understand tape).
The thing that wears you out is ego dignity, not work. That's in the Papers.
Next: Part 9