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Prologue In examining diverse religions around the world one cannot but draw to a profound conclusion that these very religions are in certain ways confusing, often in conflict with one another, and some with very distorted values quite simply don’t know what they’re talking about. They foster beliefs in religious wars, rewards in the afterlife for the murder of innocent people, and whole belief systems based on repugnant and archaic philosophies (Jesus died on the cross to save my soul, etc.). Many perpetuate the purposeless belief in reincarnation, the maintenance of an ecclesiastical authority, anthropomorphic ideas of a God of human emotions and sentiments (a vindictive and wrathful God), and a God deserving of appeasement (a God to barter with). Other religions advocate chanting the same words over and over again, spinning prayer wheels to propitiate the gods and praying ritualistically six times a day concomitant with physical prostration while facing eastward. It is for these reasons and others that the following is presented:
(60) “One of the greatest sources of confusion on Urantia concerning the nature of God grows out of the failure of your sacred books clearly to distinguish between the personalities of the Paradise Trinity and between Paradise Deity and the local universe creators and administrators. During the past dispensations of partial understanding your priests and prophets failed clearly to differentiate between Planetary Princes, System Sovereigns, Constellation Fathers, Creator Sons, Superuniverse Rulers, the Supreme Being, and the Universal Father. Many of the messages of subordinate personalities, such as Life Carriers and various orders of angels, have been, in your records, presented as coming from God himself. Urantian religious thought still confuses the associate personalities of Deity with the Universal Father himself, so that all are included under one appellation.” “The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to celestial beings and the divine rulers who serve and reign in the universes. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath.”
(1090) “During the psychologically unsettled times of the twentieth century, amid the economic upheavals, the moral crosscurrents, and the sociological rip tides of the cyclonic transitions of a scientific era, thousands upon thousands of men and women have become humanly dislocated; they are anxious, restless, fearful, uncertain, and unsettled; as never before in the world’s history they need the consolation and stabilization of sound religion. In the face of unprecedented scientific achievement and mechanical development there is spiritual stagnation and philosophic chaos.”
(1) “In the minds of the mortals of Urantia – that being the name of your world – there exists great confusion respecting the meaning of such terms as God, divinity, and deity.” The foregoing was indited by an Orvonton Divine Counselor, chief of the Corps of Superuniverse Personalities assigned to portray on Urantia the truth concerning the Paradise Deities and the universe of universes. He goes on to say, “Deity is personalizable as God, is prepersonal and superpersonal in ways not altogether comprehensible by man. Deity is characterized by the quality of unity – actual or potential – on all supermaterial levels of reality, and this unifying quality is best comprehended by creatures as divinity.” Deity functions on personal, prepersonal and superpersonal levels. Total Deity is functional on the following seven levels: 1. Static – self contained (2) Reality levels: The finite level of reality is characterized by creature life and time – space limitations. Finite realities may not have endings, but they always have beginnings – they are created. The Deity level of Supremacy may be conceived as a function in relation to finite existence’s. The absonite level of reality is characterized by things and beings without beginnings or endings and by the transcendence of time and space. Absonites are not created; they are eventuated – they simply are. No matter in what part of the master universe, whenever time and space are transcended, such an absonite phenomenon is an act of the Ultimacy of Deity. The Absolute level is beginningless, endless, timeless, and spaceless. For example: on Paradise, time and space are nonexistent; the time-space status of Paradise is absolute…Whenever, wherever, and however the absolute level of Deity functions, Paradise – absolute values and meanings are manifest. Deity we are told has a dual presence – it is both existential and experiential; existential as in the Eternal Son and experiential as in the Supreme Being; it is also associative as in God the Sevenfold and undivided as in the Trinity. Deity is the source of Divinity. Divinity is the characteristic, unifying and coordinating quality of Deity. Divinity is creature comprehensible as truth, beauty, and goodness; correlated in personality as love, mercy, and ministry; disclosed on impersonal levels as justice, power, and sovereignty. Divinity may be perfect – complete – as on existential and creator levels of Paradise perfection; it may be imperfect, as on experiential and creature levels of time – space evolution; or it may be relative, neither perfect nor imperfect, as on certain Havona levels of existential – experiential relationships.
Cosmic consciousness implies the recognition of a First Cause, the one and only uncaused reality. God, the Universal Father, functions on three Deity personality levels of subinfinite value and relative divinity expression: 1. Prepersonal – as in the ministry of the Father fragments, such as the Thought Adjusters. God is a word symbol designating all personalizations of Deity. The term God always denotes personality. The term God may be used: 1. By designation – God the Father or subordinate personalities; e.g. Creator Sons – the local universe fathers. The word God is further used as: 1. God the Father – creator, controller, and upholder – the first person of Deity The maximum Deity reality fully comprehensible by evolutionary finite creatures is embraced within the Supreme Being. Finite creatures can best comprehend God through the first three levels of God the Sevenfold.
(1268) “If man recognized that his creators – his immediate supervisors – while being divine were also finite, and that the God of time and space was an evolving and nonabsolute Deity, then would the inconsistencies of temporal inequalities cease to be profound religious paradoxes. No longer would religious faith be prostituted to the promotion of social smugness in the fortunate while serving only to encourage stoical resignation in the unfortunate victims of social deprivation. When viewing the perfect spheres of Havona, it is both reasonable and logical to believe they were made by a perfect, infinite, and absolute Creator. But that same reason and logic would compel any honest being, when viewing the turmoil, imperfections, and inequities of Urantia, to conclude that your world had been made by, and was being managed by, Creators who were subabsolute, preinfinite, and other than perfect.” “Experiential growth Implies creature-Creator partnership – God and man in association. Growth is the earmark of experiential Deity: Havona did not grow; Havona is and always has been; it is existential like the everlasting Gods who are its source. But growth characterizes the grand universe.” “The Almighty Supreme is a living and evolving Deity of power and personality. His destiny is perfection, but his present experience encompasses the elements of growth and incomplete status.” The Supreme Being functions primarily in the central universe as a spirit personality; secondarily in the grand universe as God the Almighty, a personality of power. The tertiary function of the Supreme in the master universe is now latent, existing only as an unknown mind potential…” “The experience of every evolving creature personality is a phase of the experience of the Almighty Supreme. The intelligent subjugation of every physical segment of the superuniverse is a part of the growing control of the Almighty Supreme. The creative synthesis of power and personality is a part of the creative urge of the Supreme Mind and is the very essence of the evolutionary growth of unity in the Supreme Being.” (1269) “…The completed evolution of the Almighty Supreme will result in one unified and personal Deity…there will be no almighty apart from the Supreme.” (1269) “Unqualified Paradise Deity is incomprehensible to the evolving creatures of time and space. Eternity and infinity connote a level of deity reality which time space creatures cannot comprehend.” (1220) “God the Supreme is not the Paradise Trinity, neither is he any one or all of those superuniverse Creators whose functional activities actually synthesize his evolving almighty power. God the Supreme, while of origin in the Trinity, becomes manifest to evolutionary creatures as a personality of power only through the coordinated functions of the first three levels of God the Sevenfold.” (1269) “God the Supreme derives his spirit and personality attributes from the Paradise Trinity, but he is power-actualizing in the doings of the Creator Sons, the Ancients of Days, and the Master Spirits, whose collective acts are the source of his growing power as almighty sovereign to and in the seven superuniverses.” (1265) “The motion of the Supreme is twofold: intensively toward Paradise and Deity and extensively toward the limitlessness of the Absolutes of potential.” “In the present universal age this dual motion is revealed in the descending and ascending personalities of the grand universe.” (45 – Study of the Master Universe) “The pattern of growth in the Second Age is set by the Supreme. He derives his power (as the emerging Almighty Sovereign of the superuniverses) from the activities and the successes of the Supreme Creators and all the inhabitants of the time – space universes. If the acts of these beings are evil, then growth is thwarted; if their acts are good, then growth is augmented. The time space growth of the Supreme depends on the inflowing power of the Almighty. This converging power is united with the spirit person of the Supreme, in Havona, by the action of the mind endowment of the Supreme Being. And this is the important fact: Power is united with, and subjected to, the control of spirit personality by the unifying action of mind.” This growth principle – power personality synthesis – is encountered many times in the papers. Power – personality synthesis is a transaction that takes place because of a certain set of conditions which obtain in the time space universes. In these domains, it appears that energy – matter has been given a head start – it is dominant – while spirit is striving to become dominant. But spirit alone is impotent. Spirit does not actually touch matter at any point. It takes mind to achieve the mastery of matter, of physical reality; and only that mind which is also personal possesses the power to choose to subordinate itself to spirit, even while achieving the mastery of energy-matter.” (11) To recapitulate: “God the Supreme in Havona is the personal spirit reflection of the triune Paradise Deity. This associative Deity relationship is now creatively expanding outward in God the Sevenfold and is synthesizing in the experiential power of the Almighty Supreme in the grand universe. Paradise Deity, existential as three persons is thus experientially evolving in two phases of Supremacy, while these dual phases are power – personality unifying as one Lord, the Supreme Being.” “The Supreme Being…is a synthetic coordinator of all creature-creator universe activities. The Supreme Being, now actualizing in the evolutionary universe, is the Deity correlator and synthesizer of time-space divinity, of triune Paradise Deity in experiential association with the Supreme Creators of time and space. When finally actualized, this evolutionary Deity will constitute the eternal fusion of the finite and infinite – the everlasting and indissoluble union of experiential power and spirit personality.” “All time-space finite reality, under the directive urge of the evolving Supreme-Being, is engaged in an ever-ascending mobilization and perfecting unification (power-personality synthesis) of all phases and values of finite reality, in association with varied phases of Paradise reality, to the end and for the purpose of subsequently embarking upon the attempt to reach Absonite levels of supercreature attainment.” |
