Notes From A Class On The Supreme Being; Paper 115

William S. Sadler, Jr.

Reference page numbers refer to the original printing of The Urantia Book.

 

In our discussion of original, actual and potential, we point out that there is a oneness up here on the Absolute level.  It's beyond us and if we want to think about what is up there, we've got to break it up.  We have broken it up on the blackboard as they have broken it up in the papers -- they say that if we get right down to it, there is only one Absolute and yet there are three functions there.

There are three persons of Deity -- Deity is undivided in the Trinity and I think that part of that mystery is explainable by the technique we used in analyzing that tough sentence in one of the papers on God.  When you can do more than one thing at once, sustain many relationships at the same time, be personally active and completely attentive in all the different directions at the same time, be several places at the same time, then you are way off the finite level.

When the First Source and Center is .....  [sic] he must be close to and tied in with the unrevealed Zone of Infinity -- Nether Paradise -- just underneath his personal residence on Upper Paradise.  He is united with the Eternal Son -- eternally.  They united when they produced the Infinite Spirit, and yet he is separately contactable on Paradise.  He and the Son are united in the Spirit of the Trinity.  Yet all three of them are perhaps at this very moment being contacted by ascending pilgrims and other beings.  He is functioning in the Trinity totally, ultimately and supremely -- all at the same time.  He is conscious of each one of us sitting around this table -- all at the same time.  He is all -- what doesn't he know?  He knows on that level.  He is speaking prepersonally, personally, and superpersonally simultaneously. 

The minute you begin to contemplate just a few aspects of the infinity of the First Source and Center, the thing gets to be staggering.  You are in the department of philosophy of Religion, not personal religion.  Your personal religion is all very simple; it is a direct relationship between you and the Father in heaven -- very, very simple.  It is the simplest religion that has ever been presented to the world.  But the cosmological, metaphysical, philosophical implications are stupendous.  And then having told you that it is all one, they proceed to help your confusion by saying it is infinitely diverse.  The same infinity which must be absolutely unified -- the paper on Universal Unity eloquently proclaims its unity -- still it must be infinitely diverse. 

It contains the unimaginable potential -- how many people are going to live in this outer space level?  If this thing is growing geometrically, or even faster, maybe exponentially .... [sic]

"Beyond the Supreme, concepts are increasingly names, less and less are they true designations of reality.  More and more do they become the creatures' projections of finite understanding toward the super-finite."  In the Foreword, they say the Supreme being is the maximum reality comprehensible by a finite creature -- not contactable -- not worshipable or lovable --  but comprehensible.

When we say "superpersonal", what does that mean when personality is our concept of the maximum of being?  What does the word "superpersonal" convey to you?  It is beyond our concept.  We know vaguely that it is something more than we know.  "Subpersonal" I can understand -- with animals -- that is within our concept, but not "superpersonal".  And they go on and point out that there are two viewpoints to this actual and potential -- the time viewpoint and the eternity viewpoint -- and that all the stuff we have on the blackboard here is not existent from the eternity viewpoint.

In eternity all is -- only has all not yet been revealed in time and space.  If that is the case, then what is going on?  Is this an illusion?  Flip back to the second section, the second paragraph on page 1261 -- "Value is a unique element in universe reality.  We do not comprehend how the value of anything infinite and divine could possibly be increased, but we discover that meanings can be modified if not augmented, even in the relation to Infinite Deity."

Something is happening on that Absolute level.  It can't be in the domain of facts; it can be in the domain of values, but maybe in the domain of meanings there are actual changes taking place on this Absolute level.  And then as we think of our chart, again we go back to this Triodity of Actuality -- it's working through the Ultimate and the Supreme -- that is how it registers out here in time and space.

Then we begin to pick up this picture of how the Supreme Being is put together, and they base him squarely on the Trinity, and he sits in between the two Triodities -- the Actual and the Potential.  He is the summation on the finite level of the entire transfer process which we call growth or evolution.

In Section 6 they portray the same invasion of space as each stage of creative activity proceeds out through uncharted space, it functions and exists farther and farther removed from direct action by the creative forces and divine personalities of central implacement.  These successive levels of cosmic existence become therefore increasingly dependent on development within the three absolute potentials of infinity.

The motion of the Supreme is two-fold; intensively towards Paradise and Deity -- and extensively towards the limitlessness of the Absolutes of Potentiality.  The personality movements in the present universe age are two-fold.  The personalities of Paradise divinity are continually invading space and the creatures of origin in space are eternally seeking for Paradise and Deity.

Note the arrows on the blackboard -- see how the transference is made from our standpoint.  How do you suppose it looks from the standpoint of any one of the Architects of the Master Universe?  We see the complete dip down through the finite level.  They stand at the crossroads -- like Melchizedeks in relation to divinity -- halfway.  They don't know God as Absolute, but they certainly comprehend him as completely ultimate.

You see that there is a tremendous urge for any potential to become expressed.  At the same time there is a tremendous urge for spirit to dominate.  At the same time there is a tremendous urge for the imperfect to achieve perfection and for the finite to atempt the absonite. 

Here are the fruits of the tensions producd by our three cleavages.  And it seems to me that you can explain almost everything that takes place in accordance with those three principles. 

First of all there is the tremendous urge for potentials to become actuals, for emptiness to be filled.  Second, there is at remendous urge for spirit to dominate and there are things which are not naturally responsive to spirit -- all the domain of the Unqualified Absolute and that which recognized the gravity jurisdiction of Paradise.  And third, there is a tremendous urge of the imperfect to obtain perfection and for the finite to attempt the absonite.  And having done that to try to penetrate the Absolute level.  (You can think of those as directions -- directional movements -- but you can figure out if they are all going in the same direction or whether one is horizontal -- I think of them as factually different, but in spirit the same.)

Regarding tensions, you have the Universal Absolute compensating that Deity-non-Deity tension over in the domain of potentiality.  You have him also compensating the tension produced by the horizontal cleavage in the absolute and the sub-absolute realities.

The papers comment that in the eternity of the past, when the father gave infinite personality expression of his spirit self in the being of the Eternal Son, he simultaneously revealed the infinity potential of his non-personal self as Paradise.  Thus does the Father project reality in two actual phases -- the personal and the non-personal; the spiritual and the non-spiritual.  The tension between them in the face of will to action, the Father and the Son gave existence to the Conjoint Actor and the Central Universe of material worlds and spiritual beings. [sic]

That tension, then, was resolved on the Deity level by the appearance of a new Deity reality -- the last of the existential Deities.  Now it seems to me that as you get farther and father from Paradise, matter and spirit get farther and farther apart, and the problem of spirit dominance grows greater and greater.  At first it is merely a potential problem; on our level it becomes a very actual problem.  The problem will be much tougher on the first outer space level.

They talk about this dual motion -- and motion of the Supreme is two-fold -- intensively toward Paradise and Deity and extensively toward the limitlessness of the Absolutes of Potentiality.

What they are doing here is blending power into the Supreme being under the domination of the Spirit Person, and I think they are using that word "power" in all senses of the word -- sovereignty including material control.  Not in the sense of exercising the gravity control which Paradise has over matter, but in the sanse of exercising the manipulative control which the Conjoint Actor through his agencies exercise over matter.

The Supreme Being is not the source of matter, nor is he related to gravity, but he will be the manipulator of the material realities of the seven superuniverses.  He will not be their upholder in the sense that the First Source and Center through Paradise upholds all material reality, but he will be their stabilizer.  When a universe is settled in light and life, there is a problem of material equilibrium to be solved there and by the time it reaches the minor sector stage, it is solved.

This is a problem which the sevenfold controllers attempt to solve in conjunction with God the Sevenfold.  And then they point out that htis motion is revealed -- this twin motion -- as they observe the descent of the Paradise personalities in association with the ascent of the creature personalities.

And in their discussion of the nature of the Supreme, they point out that he is the Father's escape -- almost complete escape -- as a unified Deity from absolute limitation -- and I would add even some transcendental limitation.  Here is a finite Deity.  At the same time the Supreme Being is like a drawstring which has been stitched through all finite reality and which draws it together in a unity of the whole.  This is in a sense a reassembly -- the partial reassembly of the partial I AM on the finite level.  And that is why when we someday will seek to comprehend the totality of Deity, we will be shown the Supreme Being.

In other words, when we look at what we have on the blackboard, we well can say, "What does this really mean?"  Well, to us it adds up in the Supreme Being; as to divinity on the finite level -- total divinity.  In other words, when we do attain the Father, actually we comprehend only as much of him as would be expressible in the Supreme.  The experience is interesting. 

"The ascender's companions of the transit trio are not required to enable him to locate the geographic presence of the spiritual luminosity of the Trinity, rather to afford all possible assistance to a pilgrim in his difficult task of recognizing, discerning, and comprehending the Infinite Spirit sufficiently to constitute personality recognition." -- This is not in the grasp of the Infinite Spirit.  This is a bare minimum.  Technically yes, you have recognized the personality of the Infinite Spirit.  Personality recognition -- not intellectual comprehension, not spiritual grasp, but personality recognition.  You know he is there.

I think man will develop feeling about the Supreme.  We will find the Spirit, then the Son, and then the Father.  We will ponder that experience and many times we will go back to Paradise -- certainly after each tour of  duty in the superuniverses -- and we will achieve more capacity to comprehend one of the Master Spirits and when we have rounded the seven superuniverses and have experientially approached our Master Spirit with our genetic comprehension, and experientially approached the six others with the capacity of environmental comprehension, then I think we will have seven times found God on the finite level, and I think that out of that will grow up a concept of the Supreme whom we have not met, but whom we are like.  We are a part of the Supreme quite as much on the creature level as Jesus is a part of Paradise Deity on the Creator level.

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