The Urantia Book
PART I
The Central and Superuniverses
PAPER 1
THE UNIVERSAL FATHER
Presented by a Divine Counselor, a member of a group of
celestial personalities assigned by the Ancients of Days on
Uversa, the headquarters of the seventh superuniverse, to
supervise those portions of this forthcoming revelation which
have to do with affairs beyond the borders of the local universe
of Nebadon. I am commissioned to sponsor those papers portraying
the nature and attributes of God because I represent the highest
source of information available for such a purpose on any
inhabited world. I have served as a Divine Counselor in all
seven of the superuniverses and have long resided at the
Paradise center of all things. Many times have I enjoyed the
supreme pleasure of a sojourn in the immediate personal presence
of the Universal Father. I portray the reality and truth of the
Father's nature and attributes with unchallengeable authority; I
know whereof I speak.
1:0.1 THE Universal Father is the God of all
creation, the First Source and Center of all things and beings.
First think of God as a creator, then as a controller, and
lastly as an infinite upholder. The truth about the Universal
Father had begun to dawn upon mankind when the prophet said:
"You, God, are alone; there is none beside you. You have created
the heaven and the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts; you
preserve and control them. By the Sons of God were the universes
made. The Creator covers himself with light as with a garment
and stretches out the heavens as a curtain." Only the concept of
the Universal Father -- one God in the place of many gods --
enabled mortal man to comprehend the Father as divine creator
and infinite controller.
1:0.2 The myriads of planetary systems were
all made to be eventually inhabited by many different types of
intelligent creatures, beings who could know God, receive the
divine affection, and love him in return. The universe of
universes is the work of God and the dwelling place of his
diverse creatures. "God created the heavens and formed the
earth; he established the universe and created this world not in
vain; he formed it to be inhabited."
1:0.3 The enlightened worlds all recognize and
worship the Universal Father, the eternal maker and infinite
upholder of all creation. The will creatures of universe upon
universe have embarked upon the long, long Paradise journey, the
fascinating struggle of the eternal adventure of attaining God
the Father. The transcendent goal of the children of time is to
find the eternal God, to comprehend the divine nature, to
recognize the Universal Father. God-knowing creatures have only
one supreme ambition, just one consuming desire, and that is to
become, as they are in their spheres, like him as he is in his
Paradise perfection of personality and in his universal sphere
of righteous supremacy. From the Universal Father who inhabits
eternity there has gone forth the supreme mandate, "Be you
perfect, even as I am perfect." In love and mercy the messengers
of Paradise have carried this divine exhortation down through
the ages and out through the universes, even to such lowly
animal-origin creatures as the human races of Urantia.
1:0.4 This magnificent and universal
injunction to strive for the attainment of the perfection of
divinity is the first duty, and should be the highest ambition,
of all the struggling creature creation of the God of
perfection. This possibility of the attainment of divine
perfection is the final and certain destiny of all man's eternal
spiritual progress.
1:0.5 Urantia mortals can hardly hope to be
perfect in the infinite sense, but it is entirely possible for
human beings, starting out as they do on this planet, to attain
the supernal and divine goal which the infinite God has set for
mortal man; and when they do achieve this destiny, they will, in
all that pertains to self-realization and mind attainment, be
just as replete in their sphere of divine perfection as God
himself is in his sphere of infinity and eternity. Such
perfection may not be universal in the material sense, unlimited
in intellectual grasp, or final in spiritual experience, but it
is final and complete in all finite aspects of divinity of will,
perfection of personality motivation, and God-consciousness.
1:0.6 This is the true meaning of that divine
command, "Be you perfect, even as I am perfect," which ever
urges mortal man onward and beckons him inward in that long and
fascinating struggle for the attainment of higher and higher
levels of spiritual values and true universe meanings. This
sublime search for the God of universes is the supreme adventure
of the inhabitants of all the worlds of time and space.
1. THE FATHER'S NAME
1:1.1 Of all the names by which God the Father
is known throughout the universes, those which designate him as
the First Source and the Universe Center are most often
encountered. The First Father is known by various names in
different universes and in different sectors of the same
universe. The names which the creature assigns to the Creator
are much dependent on the creature's concept of the Creator. The
First Source and Universe Center has never revealed himself by
name, only by nature. If we believe that we are the children of
this Creator, it is only natural that we should eventually call
him Father. But this is the name of our own choosing, and it
grows out of the recognition of our personal relationship with
the First Source and Center.
1:1.2 The Universal Father never imposes any
form of arbitrary recognition, formal worship, or slavish
service upon the intelligent will creatures of the universes.
The evolutionary inhabitants of the worlds of time and space
must of themselves -- in their own hearts -- recognize, love,
and voluntarily worship him. The Creator refuses to coerce or
compel the submission of the spiritual free wills of his
material creatures. The affectionate dedication of the human
will to the doing of the Father's will is man's choicest gift to
God; in fact, such a consecration of creature will constitutes
man's only possible gift of true value to the Paradise Father.
In God, man lives, moves, and has his being; there is nothing
which man can give to God except this choosing to abide by the
Father's will, and such decisions, effected by the intelligent
will creatures of the universes, constitute the reality of that
true worship which is so satisfying to the love-dominated nature
of the Creator Father.
1:1.3 When you have once become truly
God-conscious, after you really discover the majestic Creator
and begin to experience the realization of the indwelling
presence of the divine controller, then, in accordance with your
enlightenment and in accordance with the manner and method by
which the divine Sons reveal God, you will find a name for the
Universal Father which will be adequately expressive of your
concept of the First Great Source and Center. And so, on
different worlds and in various universes, the Creator becomes
known by numerous appellations, in spirit of relationship all
meaning the same but, in words and symbols, each name standing
for the degree, the depth, of his enthronement in the hearts of
his creatures of any given realm.
1:1.4 Near the center of the universe of
universes, the Universal Father is generally known by names
which may be regarded as meaning the First Source. Farther out
in the universes of space, the terms employed to designate the
Universal Father more often mean the Universal Center. Still
farther out in the starry creation, he is known, as on the
headquarters world of your local universe, as the First Creative
Source and Divine Center. In one near-by constellation God is
called the Father of Universes. In another, the Infinite
Upholder, and to the east, the Divine Controller. He has also
been designated the Father of Lights, the Gift of Life, and the
All-powerful One.
1:1.5 On those worlds where a Paradise Son has
lived a bestowal life, God is generally known by some name
indicative of personal relationship, tender affection, and
fatherly devotion. On your constellation headquarters God is
referred to as the Universal Father, and on different planets in
your local system of inhabited worlds he is variously known as
the Father of Fathers, the Paradise Father, the Havona Father,
and the Spirit Father. Those who know God through the
revelations of the bestowals of the Paradise Sons, eventually
yield to the sentimental appeal of the touching relationship of
the creature-Creator association and refer to God as "our
Father."
1:1.6 On a planet of sex creatures, in a world
where the impulses of parental emotion are inherent in the
hearts of its intelligent beings, the term Father becomes a very
expressive and appropriate name for the eternal God. He is best
known, most universally acknowledged, on your planet, Urantia,
by the name God. The name he is given is of little
importance; the significant thing is that you should know him
and aspire to be like him. Your prophets of old truly called him
"the everlasting God" and referred to him as the one who
"inhabits eternity."
2. THE REALITY OF GOD
1:2.1 God is primal reality in the spirit
world; God is the source of truth in the mind spheres; God
overshadows all throughout the material realms. To all created
intelligences God is a personality, and to the universe of
universes he is the First Source and Center of eternal reality.
God is neither manlike nor machinelike. The First Father is
universal spirit, eternal truth, infinite reality, and father
personality.
1:2.2 The eternal God is infinitely more than
reality idealized or the universe personalized. God is not
simply the supreme desire of man, the mortal quest objectified.
Neither is God merely a concept, the power-potential of
righteousness. The Universal Father is not a synonym for nature,
neither is he natural law personified. God is a transcendent
reality, not merely man's traditional concept of supreme values.
God is not a psychological focalization of spiritual meanings,
neither is he "the noblest work of man." God may be any or all
of these concepts in the minds of men, but he is more. He is a
saving person and a loving Father to all who enjoy spiritual
peace on earth, and who crave to experience personality survival
in death.
1:2.3 The actuality of the existence of God is
demonstrated in human experience by the indwelling of the divine
presence, the spirit Monitor sent from Paradise to live in the
mortal mind of man and there to assist in evolving the immortal
soul of eternal survival. The presence of this divine Adjuster
in the human mind is disclosed by three experiential phenomena:
1. The intellectual capacity for
knowing God -- God-consciousness.
2. The spiritual urge to find God --
God-seeking.
3. The personality craving to be
like God -- the wholehearted desire to do the Father's will.
1:2.4 The existence of God can never be proved
by scientific experiment or by the pure reason of logical
deduction. God can be realized only in the realms of human
experience; nevertheless, the true concept of the reality of God
is reasonable to logic, plausible to philosophy, essential to
religion, and indispensable to any hope of personality survival.
1:2.5 Those who know God have experienced the
fact of his presence; such God-knowing mortals hold in their
personal experience the only positive proof of the existence of
the living God which one human being can offer to another. The
existence of God is utterly beyond all possibility of
demonstration except for the contact between the
God-consciousness of the human mind and the God-presence of the
Thought Adjuster that indwells the mortal intellect and is
bestowed upon man as the free gift of the Universal Father.
1:2.6 In theory you may think of God as the
Creator, and he is the personal creator of Paradise and the
central universe of perfection, but the universes of time and
space are all created and organized by the Paradise corps of the
Creator Sons. The Universal Father is not the personal creator
of the local universe of Nebadon; the universe in which you live
is the creation of his Son Michael. Though the Father does not
personally create the evolutionary universes, he does control
them in many of their universal relationships and in certain of
their manifestations of physical, mindal, and spiritual
energies. God the Father is the personal creator of the Paradise
universe and, in association with the Eternal Son, the creator
of all other personal universe Creators.
1:2.7 As a physical controller in the material
universe of universes, the First Source and Center functions in
the patterns of the eternal Isle of Paradise, and through this
absolute gravity center the eternal God exercises cosmic
overcontrol of the physical level equally in the central
universe and throughout the universe of universes. As mind, God
functions in the Deity of the Infinite Spirit; as spirit, God is
manifest in the person of the Eternal Son and in the persons of
the divine children of the Eternal Son. This interrelation of
the First Source and Center with the co-ordinate Persons and
Absolutes of Paradise does not in the least preclude the
direct personal action of the Universal Father throughout
all creation and on all levels thereof. Through the presence of
his fragmentized spirit the Creator Father maintains immediate
contact with his creature children and his created universes.
3. GOD IS A UNIVERSAL SPIRIT
1:3.1 "God is spirit." He is a universal
spiritual presence. The Universal Father is an infinite
spiritual reality; he is "the sovereign, eternal, immortal,
invisible, and only true God." Even though you are "the
offspring of God," you ought not to think that the Father is
like yourselves in form and physique because you are said to be
created "in his image" -- indwelt by Mystery Monitors dispatched
from the central abode of his eternal presence. Spirit beings
are real, notwithstanding they are invisible to human eyes; even
though they have not flesh and blood.
1:3.2 Said the seer of old: "Lo, he goes by
me, and I see him not; he passes on also, but I perceive him
not." We may constantly observe the works of God, we may be
highly conscious of the material evidences of his majestic
conduct, but rarely may we gaze upon the visible manifestation
of his divinity, not even to behold the presence of his
delegated spirit of human indwelling.
1:3.3 The Universal Father is not invisible
because he is hiding himself away from the lowly creatures of
materialistic handicaps and limited spiritual endowments. The
situation rather is: "You cannot see my face, for no mortal can
see me and live." No material man could behold the spirit God
and preserve his mortal existence. The glory and the spiritual
brilliance of the divine personality presence is impossible of
approach by the lower groups of spirit beings or by any order of
material personalities. The spiritual luminosity of the Father's
personal presence is a "light which no mortal man can approach;
which no material creature has seen or can see." But it is not
necessary to see God with the eyes of the flesh in order to
discern him by the faith-vision of the spiritualized mind.
1:3.4 The spirit nature of the Universal
Father is shared fully with his coexistent self, the Eternal Son
of Paradise. Both the Father and the Son in like manner share
the universal and eternal spirit fully and unreservedly with
their conjoint personality co-ordinate, the Infinite Spirit.
God's spirit is, in and of himself, absolute; in the Son it is
unqualified, in the Spirit, universal, and in and by all of
them, infinite.
1:3.5 God is a universal spirit; God is the
universal person. The supreme personal reality of the finite
creation is spirit; the ultimate reality of the personal cosmos
is absonite spirit. Only the levels of infinity are absolute,
and only on such levels is there finality of oneness between
matter, mind, and spirit.
1:3.6 In the universes God the Father is, in
potential, the overcontroller of matter, mind, and spirit. Only
by means of his far-flung personality circuit does God deal
directly with the personalities of his vast creation of will
creatures, but he is contactable (outside of Paradise) only in
the presences of his fragmented entities, the will of God abroad
in the universes. This Paradise spirit that indwells the minds
of the mortals of time and there fosters the evolution of the
immortal soul of the surviving creature is of the nature and
divinity of the Universal Father. But the minds of such
evolutionary creatures originate in the local universes and must
gain divine perfection by achieving those experiential
transformations of spiritual attainment which are the inevitable
result of a creature's choosing to do the will of the Father in
heaven.
1:3.7 In the inner experience of man, mind is
joined to matter. Such material-linked minds cannot survive
mortal death. The technique of survival is embraced in those
adjustments of the human will and those transformations in the
mortal mind whereby such a God-conscious intellect gradually
becomes spirit taught and eventually spirit led. This evolution
of the human mind from matter association to spirit union
results in the transmutation of the potentially spirit phases of
the mortal mind into the morontia realities of the immortal
soul. Mortal mind subservient to matter is destined to become
increasingly material and consequently to suffer eventual
personality extinction; mind yielded to spirit is destined to
become increasingly spiritual and ultimately to achieve oneness
with the surviving and guiding divine spirit and in this way to
attain survival and eternity of personality existence.
1:3.8 I come forth from the Eternal, and I
have repeatedly returned to the presence of the Universal
Father. I know of the actuality and personality of the First
Source and Center, the Eternal and Universal Father. I know
that, while the great God is absolute, eternal, and infinite, he
is also good, divine, and gracious. I know the truth of the
great declarations: "God is spirit" and "God is love," and these
two attributes are most completely revealed to the universe in
the Eternal Son.
4. THE MYSTERY OF GOD
1:4.1 The infinity of the perfection of God is
such that it eternally constitutes him mystery. And the greatest
of all the unfathomable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of
the divine indwelling of mortal minds. The manner in which the
Universal Father sojourns with the creatures of time is the most
profound of all universe mysteries; the divine presence in the
mind of man is the mystery of mysteries.
1:4.2 The physical bodies of mortals are "the
temples of God." Notwithstanding that the Sovereign Creator Sons
come near the creatures of their inhabited worlds and "draw all
men to themselves"; though they "stand at the door" of
consciousness "and knock" and delight to come in to all who will
"open the doors of their hearts"; although there does exist this
intimate personal communion between the Creator Sons and their
mortal creatures, nevertheless, mortal men have something from
God himself which actually dwells within them; their bodies are
the temples thereof.
1:4.3 When you are through down here, when
your course has been run in temporary form on earth, when your
trial trip in the flesh is finished, when the dust that composes
the mortal tabernacle "returns to the earth whence it came";
then, it is revealed, the indwelling "Spirit shall return to God
who gave it." There sojourns within each moral being of this
planet a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity. It is
not yet yours by right of possession, but it is designedly
intended to be one with you if you survive the mortal existence.
1:4.4 We are constantly confronted with this
mystery of God; we are nonplused by the increasing unfolding of
the endless panorama of the truth of his infinite goodness,
endless mercy, matchless wisdom, and superb character.
1:4.5 The divine mystery consists in the
inherent difference which exists between the finite and the
infinite, the temporal and the eternal, the time-space creature
and the Universal Creator, the material and the spiritual, the
imperfection of man and the perfection of Paradise Deity. The
God of universal love unfailingly manifests himself to every one
of his creatures up to the fullness of that creature's capacity
to spiritually grasp the qualities of divine truth, beauty, and
goodness.
1:4.6 To every spirit being and to every
mortal creature in every sphere and on every world of the
universe of universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his
gracious and divine self that can be discerned or comprehended
by such spirit beings and by such mortal creatures. God is no
respecter of persons, either spiritual or material. The divine
presence which any child of the universe enjoys at any given
moment is limited only by the capacity of such a creature to
receive and to discern the spirit actualities of the
supermaterial world.
1:4.7 As a reality in human spiritual
experience God is not a mystery. But when an attempt is made to
make plain the realities of the spirit world to the physical
minds of the material order, mystery appears: mysteries so
subtle and so profound that only the faith-grasp of the
God-knowing mortal can achieve the philosophic miracle of the
recognition of the Infinite by the finite, the discernment of
the eternal God by the evolving mortals of the material worlds
of time and space.
5. PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSAL FATHER
1:5.1 Do not permit the magnitude of God, his
infinity, either to obscure or eclipse his personality. "He who
planned the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, shall
he not see?" The Universal Father is the acme of divine
personality; he is the origin and destiny of personality
throughout all creation. God is both infinite and personal; he
is an infinite personality. The Father is truly a personality,
notwithstanding that the infinity of his person places him
forever beyond the full comprehension of material and finite
beings.
1:5.2 God is much more than a personality as
personality is understood by the human mind; he is even far more
than any possible concept of a superpersonality. But it is
utterly futile to discuss such incomprehensible concepts of
divine personality with the minds of material creatures whose
maximum concept of the reality of being consists in the idea and
ideal of personality. The material creature's highest possible
concept of the Universal Creator is embraced within the
spiritual ideals of the exalted idea of divine personality.
Therefore, although you may know that God must be much more than
the human conception of personality, you equally well know that
the Universal Father cannot possibly be anything less than an
eternal, infinite, true, good, and beautiful personality.
1:5.3 God is not hiding from any of his
creatures. He is unapproachable to so many orders of beings only
because he "dwells in a light which no material creature can
approach." The immensity and grandeur of the divine personality
is beyond the grasp of the unperfected mind of evolutionary
mortals. He "measures the waters in the hollow of his hand,
measures a universe with the span of his hand. It is he who sits
on the circle of the earth, who stretches out the heavens as a
curtain and spreads them out as a universe to dwell in." "Lift
up your eyes on high and behold who has created all these
things, who brings out their worlds by number and calls them all
by their names"; and so it is true that "the invisible things of
God are partially understood by the things which are made."
Today, and as you are, you must discern the invisible Maker
through his manifold and diverse creation, as well as through
the revelation and ministration of his Sons and their numerous
subordinates.
1:5.4 Even though material mortals cannot see
the person of God, they should rejoice in the assurance that he
is a person; by faith accept the truth which portrays that the
Universal Father so loved the world as to provide for the
eternal spiritual progression of its lowly inhabitants; that he
"delights in his children." God is lacking in none of those
superhuman and divine attributes which constitute a perfect,
eternal, loving, and infinite Creator personality.
1:5.5 In the local creations (excepting the
personnel of the superuniverses) God has no personal or
residential manifestation aside from the Paradise Creator Sons
who are the fathers of the inhabited worlds and the sovereigns
of the local universes. If the faith of the creature were
perfect, he would assuredly know that when he had seen a Creator
Son he had seen the Universal Father; in seeking for the Father,
he would not ask nor expect to see other than the Son. Mortal
man simply cannot see God until he achieves completed spirit
transformation and actually attains Paradise.
1:5.6 The natures of the Paradise Creator Sons
do not encompass all the unqualified potentials of the universal
absoluteness of the infinite nature of the First Great Source
and Center, but the Universal Father is in every way divinely
present in the Creator Sons. The Father and his Sons are one.
These Paradise Sons of the order of Michael are perfect
personalities, even the pattern for all local universe
personality from that of the Bright and Morning Star down to the
lowest human creature of progressing animal evolution.
1:5.7 Without God and except for his great and
central person, there would be no personality throughout all the
vast universe of universes. God is personality.
1:5.8 Notwithstanding that God is an eternal
power, a majestic presence, a transcendent ideal, and a glorious
spirit, though he is all these and infinitely more, nonetheless,
he is truly and everlastingly a perfect Creator personality, a
person who can "know and be known," who can "love and be loved,"
and one who can befriend us; while you can be known, as other
humans have been known, as the friend of God. He is a real
spirit and a spiritual reality.
1:5.9 As we see the Universal Father revealed
throughout his universe; as we discern him indwelling his
myriads of creatures; as we behold him in the persons of his
Sovereign Sons; as we continue to sense his divine presence here
and there, near and afar, let us not doubt nor question his
personality primacy. Notwithstanding all these far-flung
distributions, he remains a true person and everlastingly
maintains personal connection with the countless hosts of his
creatures scattered throughout the universe of universes.
1:5.10 The idea of the personality of the
Universal Father is an enlarged and truer concept of God which
has come to mankind chiefly through revelation. Reason, wisdom,
and religious experience all infer and imply the personality of
God, but they do not altogether validate it. Even the indwelling
Thought Adjuster is prepersonal. The truth and maturity of any
religion is directly proportional to its concept of the infinite
personality of God and to its grasp of the absolute unity of
Deity. The idea of a personal Deity becomes, then, the measure
of religious maturity after religion has first formulated the
concept of the unity of God.
1:5.11 Primitive religion had many personal
gods, and they were fashioned in the image of man. Revelation
affirms the validity of the personality concept of God which is
merely possible in the scientific postulate of a First Cause and
is only provisionally suggested in the philosophic idea of
Universal Unity. Only by personality approach can any person
begin to comprehend the unity of God. To deny the personality of
the First Source and Center leaves one only the choice of two
philosophic dilemmas: materialism or pantheism.
1:5.12 In the contemplation of Deity, the
concept of personality must be divested of the idea of
corporeality. A material body is not indispensable to
personality in either man or God. The corporeality error is
shown in both extremes of human philosophy. In materialism,
since man loses his body at death, he ceases to exist as a
personality; in pantheism, since God has no body, he is not,
therefore, a person. The superhuman type of progressing
personality functions in a union of mind and spirit.
1:5.13 Personality is not simply an attribute
of God; it rather stands for the totality of the co-ordinated
infinite nature and the unified divine will which is exhibited
in eternity and universality of perfect expression. Personality,
in the supreme sense, is the revelation of God to the universe
of universes.
1:5.14 God, being eternal, universal,
absolute, and infinite, does not grow in knowledge nor increase
in wisdom. God does not acquire experience, as finite man might
conjecture or comprehend, but he does, within the realms of his
own eternal personality, enjoy those continuous expansions of
self-realization which are in certain ways comparable to, and
analogous with, the acquirement of new experience by the finite
creatures of the evolutionary worlds.
1:5.15 The absolute perfection of the infinite
God would cause him to suffer the awful limitations of
unqualified finality of perfectness were it not a fact that the
Universal Father directly participates in the personality
struggle of every imperfect soul in the wide universe who seeks,
by divine aid, to ascend to the spiritually perfect worlds on
high. This progressive experience of every spirit being and
every mortal creature throughout the universe of universes is a
part of the Father's ever-expanding Deity-consciousness of the
never-ending divine circle of ceaseless self-realization.
1:5.16 It is literally true: "In all your
afflictions he is afflicted." "In all your triumphs he triumphs
in and with you." His prepersonal divine spirit is a real part
of you. The Isle of Paradise responds to all the physical
metamorphoses of the universe of universes; the Eternal Son
includes all the spirit impulses of all creation; the Conjoint
Actor encompasses all the mind expression of the expanding
cosmos. The Universal Father realizes in the fullness of the
divine consciousness all the individual experience of the
progressive struggles of the expanding minds and the ascending
spirits of every entity, being, and personality of the whole
evolutionary creation of time and space. And all this is
literally true, for "in Him we all live and move and have our
being."
6. PERSONALITY IN THE UNIVERSE
1:6.1 Human personality is the time-space
image-shadow cast by the divine Creator personality. And no
actuality can ever be adequately comprehended by an examination
of its shadow. Shadows should be interpreted in terms of the
true substance.
1:6.2 God is to science a cause, to philosophy
an idea, to religion a person, even the loving heavenly Father.
God is to the scientist a primal force, to the philosopher a
hypothesis of unity, to the religionist a living spiritual
experience. Man's inadequate concept of the personality of the
Universal Father can be improved only by man's spiritual
progress in the universe and will become truly adequate only
when the pilgrims of time and space finally attain the divine
embrace of the living God on Paradise.
1:6.3 Never lose sight of the antipodal
viewpoints of personality as it is conceived by God and man. Man
views and comprehends personality, looking from the finite to
the infinite; God looks from the infinite to the finite. Man
possesses the lowest type of personality; God, the highest, even
supreme, ultimate, and absolute. Therefore did the better
concepts of the divine personality have patiently to await the
appearance of improved ideas of human personality, especially
the enhanced revelation of both human and divine personality in
the Urantian bestowal life of Michael, the Creator Son.
1:6.4 The prepersonal divine spirit which
indwells the mortal mind carries, in its very presence, the
valid proof of its actual existence, but the concept of the
divine personality can be grasped only by the spiritual insight
of genuine personal religious experience. Any person, human or
divine, may be known and comprehended quite apart from the
external reactions or the material presence of that person.
1:6.5 Some degree of moral affinity and
spiritual harmony is essential to friendship between two
persons; a loving personality can hardly reveal himself to a
loveless person. Even to approach the knowing of a divine
personality, all of man's personality endowments must be wholly
consecrated to the effort; halfhearted, partial devotion will be
unavailing.
1:6.6 The more completely man understands
himself and appreciates the personality values of his fellows,
the more he will crave to know the Original Personality, and the
more earnestly such a God-knowing human will strive to become
like the Original Personality. You can argue over opinions about
God, but experience with him and in him exists above and beyond
all human controversy and mere intellectual logic. The
God-knowing man describes his spiritual experiences, not to
convince unbelievers, but for the edification and mutual
satisfaction of believers.
1:6.7 To assume that the universe can be
known, that it is intelligible, is to assume that the universe
is mind made and personality managed. Man's mind can only
perceive the mind phenomena of other minds, be they human or
superhuman. If man's personality can experience the universe,
there is a divine mind and an actual personality somewhere
concealed in that universe.
1:6.8 God is spirit -- spirit personality; man
is also a spirit -- potential spirit personality. Jesus of
Nazareth attained the full realization of this potential of
spirit personality in human experience; therefore his life of
achieving the Father's will becomes man's most real and ideal
revelation of the personality of God. Even though the
personality of the Universal Father can be grasped only in
actual religious experience, in Jesus' earth life we are
inspired by the perfect demonstration of such a realization and
revelation of the personality of God in a truly human
experience.
7. SPIRITUAL VALUE OF THE PERSONALITY
CONCEPT
1:7.1 When Jesus talked about "the living
God," he referred to a personal Deity -- the Father in heaven.
The concept of the personality of Deity facilitates fellowship;
it favors intelligent worship; it promotes refreshing
trustfulness. Interactions can be had between nonpersonal
things, but not fellowship. The fellowship relation of father
and son, as between God and man, cannot be enjoyed unless both
are persons. Only personalities can commune with each other,
albeit this personal communion may be greatly facilitated by the
presence of just such an impersonal entity as the Thought
Adjuster.
1:7.2 Man does not achieve union with God as a
drop of water might find unity with the ocean. Man attains
divine union by progressive reciprocal spiritual communion, by
personality intercourse with the personal God, by increasingly
attaining the divine nature through wholehearted and intelligent
conformity to the divine will. Such a sublime relationship can
exist only between personalities.
1:7.3 The concept of truth might possibly be
entertained apart from personality, the concept of beauty may
exist without personality, but the concept of divine goodness is
understandable only in relation to personality. Only a person
can love and be loved. Even beauty and truth would be divorced
from survival hope if they were not attributes of a personal
God, a loving Father.
1:7.4 We cannot fully understand how God can
be primal, changeless, all-powerful, and perfect, and at the
same time be surrounded by an ever-changing and apparently
law-limited universe, an evolving universe of relative
imperfections. But we can know such a truth in our own
personal experience since we all maintain identity of
personality and unity of will in spite of the constant changing
of both ourselves and our environment.
1:7.5 Ultimate universe reality cannot be
grasped by mathematics, logic, or philosophy, only by personal
experience in progressive conformity to the divine will of a
personal God. Neither science, philosophy, nor theology can
validate the personality of God. Only the personal experience of
the faith sons of the heavenly Father can effect the actual
spiritual realization of the personality of God.
1:7.6 The higher concepts of universe
personality imply: identity, self-consciousness, self-will, and
possibility for self-revelation. And these characteristics
further imply fellowship with other and equal personalities,
such as exists in the personality associations of the Paradise
Deities. And the absolute unity of these associations is so
perfect that divinity becomes known by indivisibility, by
oneness. "The Lord God is one." Indivisibility of
personality does not interfere with God's bestowing his spirit
to live in the hearts of mortal men. Indivisibility of a human
father's personality does not prevent the reproduction of mortal
sons and daughters.
1:7.7 This concept of indivisibility in
association with the concept of unity implies transcendence of
both time and space by the Ultimacy of Deity; therefore neither
space nor time can be absolute or infinite. The First Source and
Center is that infinity who unqualifiedly transcends all mind,
all matter, and all spirit.
1:7.8 The fact of the Paradise Trinity in no
manner violates the truth of the divine unity. The three
personalities of Paradise Deity are, in all universe reality
reactions and in all creature relations, as one. Neither does
the existence of these three eternal persons violate the truth
of the indivisibility of Deity. I am fully aware that I have at
my command no language adequate to make clear to the mortal mind
how these universe problems appear to us. But you should not
become discouraged; not all of these things are wholly clear to
even the high personalities belonging to my group of Paradise
beings. Ever bear in mind that these profound truths pertaining
to Deity will increasingly clarify as your minds become
progressively spiritualized during the successive epochs of the
long mortal ascent to Paradise.
1:7.9
Presented by a Divine Counselor, a member of a group of
celestial personalities assigned by the Ancients of Days on
Uversa, the headquarters of the seventh superuniverse, to
supervise those portions of this forthcoming revelation which
have to do with affairs beyond the borders of the local universe
of Nebadon. I am commissioned to sponsor those papers portraying
the nature and attributes of God because I represent the highest
source of information available for such a purpose on any
inhabited world. I have served as a Divine Counselor in all
seven of the superuniverses and have long resided at the
Paradise center of all things. Many times have I enjoyed the
supreme pleasure of a sojourn in the immediate personal presence
of the Universal Father. I portray the reality and truth of the
Father's nature and attributes with unchallengeable authority; I
know whereof I speak.
