The Urantia Book
PAPER 7
RELATION OF THE ETERNAL SON TO THE UNIVERSE
Indited by a Divine Counselor assigned to formulate this
statement depicting the Eternal Son of Paradise.
7:0.1 THE Original Son is ever concerned with
the execution of the spiritual aspects of the Father's eternal
purpose as it progressively unfolds in the phenomena of the
evolving universes with their manifold groups of living beings.
We do not fully comprehend this eternal plan, but the Paradise
Son undoubtedly does.
7:0.2 The Son is like the Father in that he
seeks to bestow everything possible of himself upon his
co-ordinate Sons and upon their subordinate Sons. And the Son
shares the Father's self-distributive nature in the unstinted
bestowal of himself upon the Infinite Spirit, their conjoint
executive.
7:0.3 As the upholder of spirit realities, the
Second Source and Center is the eternal counterpoise of the Isle
of Paradise, which so magnificently upholds all things material.
Thus is the First Source and Center forever revealed in the
material beauty of the exquisite patterns of the central Isle
and in the spiritual values of the supernal personality of the
Eternal Son.
7:0.4 The Eternal Son is the actual upholder
of the vast creation of spirit realities and spiritual beings.
The spirit world is the habit, the personal conduct, of the Son,
and the impersonal realities of spirit nature are always
responsive to the will and purpose of the perfect personality of
the Absolute Son.
7:0.5 The Son is not, however, personally
responsible for the conduct of all spirit personalities. The
will of the personal creature is relatively free and hence
determines the actions of such volitional beings. Therefore the
freewill spirit world is not always truly representative of the
character of the Eternal Son, even as nature on Urantia is not
truly revelatory of the perfection and immutability of Paradise
and Deity. But no matter what may characterize the freewill
action of man or angel, the Son's eternal grasp of the universal
gravity control of all spirit realities continues as absolute.
1. THE SPIRIT-GRAVITY CIRCUIT
7:1.1
Everything taught concerning the immanence of God, his
omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, is equally true of
the Son in the spiritual domains. The pure and universal spirit
gravity of all creation, this exclusively spiritual circuit,
leads directly back to the person of the Second Source and
Center on Paradise. He presides over the control and operation
of that ever-present and unerring spiritual grasp of all true
spirit values. Thus does the Eternal Son exercise absolute
spiritual sovereignty. He literally holds all spirit realities
and all spiritualized values, as it were, in the hollow of his
hand. The control of universal spiritual gravity is
universal spiritual sovereignty.
7:1.2 This gravity control of spiritual things
operates independently of time and space; therefore is spirit
energy undiminished in transmission. Spirit gravity never
suffers time delays, nor does it undergo space diminution. It
does not decrease in accordance with the square of the distance
of its transmission; the circuits of pure spirit power are not
retarded by the mass of the material creation. And this
transcendence of time and space by pure spirit energies is
inherent in the absoluteness of the Son; it is not due to the
interposition of the antigravity forces of the Third Source and
Center.
7:1.3 Spirit realities respond to the drawing
power of the center of spiritual gravity in accordance with
their qualitative value, their actual degree of spirit nature.
Spirit substance (quality) is just as responsive to spirit
gravity as the organized energy of physical matter (quantity) is
responsive to physical gravity. Spiritual values and spirit
forces are real. From the viewpoint of personality,
spirit is the soul of creation; matter is the shadowy physical
body.
7:1.4 The reactions and fluctuations of spirit
gravity are ever true to the content of spiritual values, the
qualitative spiritual status of an individual or a world. This
drawing power is instantly responsive to the inter- and
intraspirit values of any universe situation or planetary
condition. Every time a spiritual reality actualizes in the
universes, this change necessitates the immediate and
instantaneous readjustment of spirit gravity. Such a new spirit
is actually a part of the Second Source and Center; and just as
certainly as mortal man becomes a spiritized being, he will
attain the spiritual Son, the center and source of spirit
gravity.
7:1.5 The Son's spiritual drawing power is
inherent to a lesser degree in many Paradise orders of sonship.
For there do exist within the absolute spirit-gravity circuit
those local systems of spiritual attraction that function in the
lesser units of creation. Such subabsolute focalizations of
spirit gravity are a part of the divinity of the Creator
personalities of time and space and are correlated with the
emerging experiential overcontrol of the Supreme Being.
7:1.6 Spirit-gravity pull and response thereto
operate not only on the universe as a whole but also even
between individuals and groups of individuals. There is a
spiritual cohesiveness among the spiritual and spiritized
personalities of any world, race, nation, or believing group of
individuals. There is a direct attractiveness of a spirit nature
between spiritually minded persons of like tastes and longings.
The term kindred spirits is not wholly a figure of
speech.
7:1.7 Like the material gravity of Paradise,
the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son is absolute. Sin and
rebellion may interfere with the operation of local universe
circuits, but nothing can suspend the spirit gravity of the
Eternal Son. The Lucifer rebellion produced many changes in your
system of inhabited worlds and on Urantia, but we do not observe
that the resultant spiritual quarantine of your planet in the
least affected the presence and function of either the
omnipresent spirit of the Eternal Son or the associated
spirit-gravity circuit.
7:1.8 All reactions of the spirit-gravity
circuit of the grand universe are predictable. We recognize all
actions and reactions of the omnipresent spirit of the Eternal
Son and find them to be dependable. In accordance with
well-known laws, we can and do measure spiritual gravity just as
man attempts to compute the workings of finite physical gravity.
There is an unvarying response of the Son's spirit to all spirit
things, beings, and persons, and this response is always in
accordance with the degree of actuality (the qualitative degree
of reality) of all such spiritual values.
7:1.9 But alongside this very dependable and
predictable function of the spiritual presence of the Eternal
Son, there are encountered phenomena which are not so
predictable in their reactions. Such phenomena probably indicate
the co-ordinate action of the Deity Absolute in the realms of
emerging spiritual potentials. We know that the spirit presence
of the Eternal Son is the influence of a majestic and infinite
personality, but we hardly regard the reactions associated with
the conjectured performances of the Deity Absolute as personal.
7:1.10 Viewed from the personality standpoint
and by persons, the Eternal Son and the Deity Absolute appear to
be related in the following way: The Eternal Son dominates the
realm of actual spiritual values, whereas the Deity Absolute
seems to pervade the vast domain of potential spirit values. All
actual value of spirit nature finds lodgment in the gravity
grasp of the Eternal Son but, if potential, then apparently in
the presence of the Deity Absolute.
7:1.11 Spirit seems to emerge from the
potentials of the Deity Absolute; evolving spirit finds
correlation in the experiential and incomplete grasps of the
Supreme and the Ultimate; spirit eventually finds final destiny
in the absolute grasp of the spiritual gravity of the Eternal
Son. This appears to be the cycle of experiential spirit, but
existential spirit is inherent in the infinity of the Second
Source and Center.
2. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE ETERNAL SON
7:2.1 On Paradise the presence and personal
activity of the Original Son is profound, absolute in the
spiritual sense. As we pass outward from Paradise through Havona
and into the realms of the seven superuniverses, we detect less
and less of the personal activity of the Eternal Son. In the
post-Havona universes the presence of the Eternal Son is
personalized in the Paradise Sons, conditioned by the
experiential realities of the Supreme and the Ultimate, and
co-ordinated with the unlimited spirit potential of the Deity
Absolute.
7:2.2 In the central universe the personal
activity of the Original Son is discernible in the exquisite
spiritual harmony of the eternal creation. Havona is so
marvelously perfect that the spiritual status and the energy
states of this pattern universe are in perfect and perpetual
balance.
7:2.3 In the superuniverses the Son is not
personally present or resident; in these creations he maintains
only a superpersonal representation. These spirit manifestations
of the Son are not personal; they are not in the personality
circuit of the Universal Father. We know of no better term to
use than to designate them superpersonalities; and they
are finite beings; they are neither absonite nor absolute.
7:2.4 The administration of the Eternal Son in
the superuniverses, being exclusively spiritual and
superpersonal, is not discernible by creature personalities.
Nonetheless, the all-pervading spiritual urge of the Son's
personal influence is encountered in every phase of the
activities of all sectors of the domains of the Ancients of
Days. In the local universes, however, we observe the Eternal
Son personally present in the persons of the Paradise Sons. Here
the infinite Son spiritually and creatively functions in the
persons of the majestic corps of the co-ordinate Creator Sons.
3. RELATION OF THE ETERNAL SON TO THE
INDIVIDUAL
7:3.1 In the local universe ascent the mortals
of time look to the Creator Son as the personal representative
of the Eternal Son. But when they begin the ascent of the
superuniverse training regime, the pilgrims of time increasingly
detect the supernal presence of the inspiring spirit of the
Eternal Son, and they are able to profit by the intake of this
ministry of spiritual energization. In Havona the ascenders
become still more conscious of the loving embrace of the
all-pervading spirit of the Original Son. At no stage of the
entire mortal ascension does the spirit of the Eternal Son
indwell the mind or soul of the pilgrim of time, but his
beneficence is ever near and always concerned with the welfare
and spiritual security of the advancing children of time.
7:3.2 The spiritual-gravity pull of the
Eternal Son constitutes the inherent secret of the Paradise
ascension of surviving human souls. All genuine spirit values
and all bona fide spiritualized individuals are held within the
unfailing grasp of the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son. The
mortal mind, for example, initiates its career as a material
mechanism and is eventually mustered into the Corps of the
Finality as a well-nigh perfected spirit existence, becoming
progressively less subject to material gravity and
correspondingly more responsive to the inward pulling urge of
spirit gravity during this entire experience. The spirit-gravity
circuit literally pulls the soul of man Paradiseward.
7:3.3 The spirit-gravity circuit is the basic
channel for transmitting the genuine prayers of the believing
human heart from the level of human consciousness to the actual
consciousness of Deity. That which represents true spiritual
value in your petitions will be seized by the universal circuit
of spirit gravity and will pass immediately and simultaneously
to all divine personalities concerned. Each will occupy himself
with that which belongs to his personal province. Therefore, in
your practical religious experience, it is immaterial whether,
in addressing your supplications, you visualize the Creator Son
of your local universe or the Eternal Son at the center of all
things.
7:3.4 The discriminative operation of the
spirit-gravity circuit might possibly be compared to the
functions of the neural circuits in the material human body:
Sensations travel inward over the neural paths; some are
detained and responded to by the lower automatic spinal centers;
others pass on to the less automatic but habit-trained centers
of the lower brain, while the most important and vital incoming
messages flash by these subordinate centers and are immediately
registered in the highest levels of human consciousness.
7:3.5 But how much more perfect is the superb
technique of the spiritual world! If anything originates in your
consciousness that is fraught with supreme spiritual value, when
once you give it expression, no power in the universe can
prevent its flashing directly to the Absolute Spirit Personality
of all creation.
7:3.6 Conversely, if your supplications are
purely material and wholly self-centered, there exists no plan
whereby such unworthy prayers can find lodgment in the spirit
circuit of the Eternal Son. The content of any petition which is
not "spirit indited" can find no place in the universal
spiritual circuit; such purely selfish and material requests
fall dead; they do not ascend in the circuits of true spirit
values. Such words are as "sounding brass and a tinkling
cymbal."
7:3.7 It is the motivating thought, the
spiritual content, that validates the mortal supplication. Words
are valueless.
4. THE DIVINE PERFECTION PLANS
7:4.1 The Eternal Son is in everlasting
liaison with the Father in the successful prosecution of the
divine plan of progress: the universal plan for the
creation, evolution, ascension, and perfection of will
creatures. And, in divine faithfulness, the Son is the eternal
equal of the Father.
7:4.2 The Father and his Son are as one in the
formulation and prosecution of this gigantic attainment plan for
advancing the material beings of time to the perfection of
eternity. This project for the spiritual elevation of the
ascendant souls of space is a joint creation of the Father and
the Son, and they are, with the co-operation of the Infinite
Spirit, engaged in associative execution of their divine
purpose.
7:4.3 This divine plan of perfection
attainment embraces three unique, though marvelously correlated,
enterprises of universal adventure:
7:4.4 1. The Plan of Progressive Attainment.
This is the Universal Father's plan of evolutionary ascension, a
program unreservedly accepted by the Eternal Son when he
concurred in the Father's proposal, "Let us make mortal
creatures in our own image." This provision for upstepping the
creatures of time involves the Father's bestowal of the Thought
Adjusters and the endowing of material creatures with the
prerogatives of personality.
7:4.5 2. The Bestowal Plan. The next
universal plan is the great Father-revelation enterprise of the
Eternal Son and his co-ordinate Sons. This is the proposal of
the Eternal Son and consists of his bestowal of the Sons of God
upon the evolutionary creations, there to personalize and
factualize, to incarnate and make real, the love of the Father
and the mercy of the Son to the creatures of all universes.
Inherent in the bestowal plan, and as a provisional feature of
this ministration of love, the Paradise Sons act as
rehabilitators of that which misguided creature will has placed
in spiritual jeopardy. Whenever and wherever there occurs a
delay in the functioning of the attainment plan, if rebellion,
perchance, should mar or complicate this enterprise, then do the
emergency provisions of the bestowal plan become active
forthwith. The Paradise Sons stand pledged and ready to function
as retrievers, to go into the very realms of rebellion and there
restore the spiritual status of the spheres. And such a heroic
service a co-ordinate Creator Son did perform on Urantia in
connection with his experiential bestowal career of sovereignty
acquirement.
7:4.6 3. The Plan of Mercy Ministry.
When the attainment plan and the bestowal plan had been
formulated and proclaimed, alone and of himself, the Infinite
Spirit projected and put in operation the tremendous and
universal enterprise of mercy ministry. This is the service so
essential to the practical and effective operation of both the
attainment and the bestowal undertakings, and the spiritual
personalities of the Third Source and Center all partake of the
spirit of mercy ministry which is so much a part of the nature
of the Third Person of Deity. Not only in creation but also in
administration, the Infinite Spirit functions truly and
literally as the conjoint executive of the Father and the Son.
7:4.7 The Eternal Son is the personal trustee,
the divine custodian, of the Father's universal plan of creature
ascension. Having promulgated the universal mandate, "Be you
perfect, even as I am perfect," the Father intrusted the
execution of this tremendous undertaking to the Eternal Son; and
the Eternal Son shares the fostering of this supernal enterprise
with his divine co-ordinate, the Infinite Spirit. Thus do the
Deities effectively co-operate in the work of creation, control,
evolution, revelation, and ministration -- and if required, in
restoration and rehabilitation.
5. THE SPIRIT OF BESTOWAL
7:5.1 The Eternal Son without reservation
joined with the Universal Father in broadcasting that tremendous
injunction to all creation: "Be you perfect, even as your Father
in Havona is perfect." And ever since, that invitation-command
has motivated all the survival plans and the bestowal projects
of the Eternal Son and his vast family of co-ordinate and
associated Sons. And in these very bestowals the Sons of God
have become to all evolutionary creatures "the way, the truth,
and the life."
7:5.2 The Eternal Son cannot contact directly
with human beings as does the Father through the gift of the
prepersonal Thought Adjusters, but the Eternal Son does draw
near to created personalities by a series of downstepping
gradations of divine sonship until he is enabled to stand in
man's presence and, at times, as man himself.
7:5.3 The purely personal nature of the
Eternal Son is incapable of fragmentation. The Eternal Son
ministers as a spiritual influence or as a person, never
otherwise. The Son finds it impossible to become a part of
creature experience in the sense that the Father-Adjuster
participates therein, but the Eternal Son compensates this
limitation by the technique of bestowal. What the experience of
fragmented entities means to the Universal Father, the
incarnation experiences of the Paradise Sons mean to the Eternal
Son.
7:5.4 The Eternal Son comes not to mortal man
as the divine will, the Thought Adjuster indwelling the human
mind, but the Eternal Son did come to mortal man on Urantia when
the divine personality of his Son, Michael of Nebadon,
incarnated in the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth. To share
the experience of created personalities, the Paradise Sons of
God must assume the very natures of such creatures and incarnate
their divine personalities as the actual creatures themselves.
Incarnation, the secret of Sonarington, is the technique of the
Son's escape from the otherwise all-encompassing fetters of
personality absolutism.
7:5.5 Long, long ago the Eternal Son bestowed
himself upon each of the circuits of the central creation for
the enlightenment and advancement of all the inhabitants and
pilgrims of Havona, including the ascending pilgrims of time. On
none of these seven bestowals did he function as either an
ascender or a Havoner. He existed as himself. His experience was
unique; it was not with or as a human or other
pilgrim but in some way associative in the superpersonal sense.
7:5.6 Neither did he pass through the rest
that intervenes between the inner Havona circuit and the shores
of Paradise. It is not possible for him, an absolute being, to
suspend consciousness of personality, for in him center all
lines of spiritual gravity. And during the times of these
bestowals the central Paradise lodgment of spiritual luminosity
was undimmed, and the Son's grasp of universal spirit gravity
was undiminished.
7:5.7 The bestowals of the Eternal Son in
Havona are not within the scope of human imagination; they were
transcendental. He added to the experience of all Havona then
and subsequently, but we do not know whether he added to the
supposed experiential capacity of his existential nature. That
would fall within the bestowal mystery of the Paradise Sons. We
do, however, believe that whatever the Eternal Son acquired on
these bestowal missions, he has ever since retained; but we do
not know what it is.
7:5.8 Whatever our difficulty in comprehending
the bestowals of the Second Person of Deity, we do comprehend
the Havona bestowal of a Son of the Eternal Son, who literally
passed through the circuits of the central universe and actually
shared those experiences which constitute an ascender's
preparation for Deity attainment. This was the original Michael,
the first-born Creator Son, and he passed through the life
experiences of the ascending pilgrims from circuit to circuit,
personally journeying a stage of each circle with them in the
days of Grandfanda, the first of all mortals to attain Havona.
7:5.9 Whatever else this original Michael
revealed, he made the transcendent bestowal of the Original
Mother Son real to the creatures of Havona. So real, that
forevermore each pilgrim of time who labors in the adventure of
making the Havona circuits is cheered and strengthened by the
certain knowledge that the Eternal Son of God seven times
abdicated the power and glory of Paradise to participate in the
experiences of the time-space pilgrims on the seven circuits of
progressive Havona attainment.
7:5.10 The Eternal Son is the exemplary
inspiration for all the Sons of God in their ministrations of
bestowal throughout the universes of time and space. The
co-ordinate Creator Sons and the associate Magisterial Sons,
together with other unrevealed orders of sonship, all partake of
this wonderful willingness to bestow themselves upon the varied
orders of creature life and as the creatures themselves.
Therefore, in spirit and because of kinship of nature as well as
fact of origin, it becomes true that in the bestowal of each Son
of God upon the worlds of space, in and through and by these
bestowals, the Eternal Son has bestowed himself upon the
intelligent will creatures of the universes.
7:5.11 In spirit and nature, if not in all
attributes, each Paradise Son is a divinely perfect portraiture
of the Original Son. It is literally true, whosoever has seen a
Paradise Son has seen the Eternal Son of God.
6. THE PARADISE SONS OF GOD
7:6.1 The lack of a knowledge of the multiple
Sons of God is a source of great confusion on Urantia. And this
ignorance persists in the face of such statements as the record
of a conclave of these divine personalities: "When the Sons of
God proclaimed joy, and all of the Morning Stars sang together."
Every millennium of sector standard time the various orders of
the divine Sons forgather for their periodic conclaves.
7:6.2 The Eternal Son is the personal source
of the adorable attributes of mercy and service which so
abundantly characterize all orders of the descending Sons of God
as they function throughout creation. All the divine nature, if
not all the infinity of attributes, the Eternal Son unfailingly
transmits to the Paradise Sons who go out from the eternal Isle
to reveal his divine character to the universe of universes.
7:6.3 The Original and Eternal Son is the
offspring-person of the "first" completed and infinite thought
of the Universal Father. Every time the Universal Father and the
Eternal Son jointly project a new, original, identical, unique,
and absolute personal thought, that very instant this creative
idea is perfectly and finally personalized in the being and
personality of a new and original Creator Son. In spirit
nature, divine wisdom, and co-ordinate creative power, these
Creator Sons are potentially equal with God the Father and God
the Son.
7:6.4 The Creator Sons go out from Paradise
into the universes of time and, with the co-operation of the
controlling and creative agencies of the Third Source and
Center, complete the organization of the local universes of
progressive evolution. These Sons are not attached to, nor are
they concerned with, the central and universal controls of
matter, mind, and spirit. Hence are they limited in their
creative acts by the pre-existence, priority, and primacy of the
First Source and Center and his co-ordinate Absolutes. These
Sons are able to administer only that which they bring into
existence. Absolute administration is inherent in priority of
existence and is inseparable from eternity of presence. The
Father remains primal in the universes.
7:6.5 Much as the Creator Sons are
personalized by the Father and the Son, so are the
Magisterial Sons personalized by the Son and the Spirit.
These are the Sons who, in the experiences of creature
incarnation, earn the right to serve as the judges of survival
in the creations of time and space.
7:6.6 The Father, Son, and Spirit also unite
to personalize the versatile Trinity Teacher Sons, who
range the grand universe as the supernal teachers of all
personalities, human and divine. And there are numerous other
orders of Paradise sonship that have not been brought to the
attention of Urantia mortals.
7:6.7 Between the Original Mother Son and
these hosts of Paradise Sons scattered throughout all creation,
there is a direct and exclusive channel of communication, a
channel whose function is inherent in the quality of spiritual
kinship which unites them in bonds of near-absolute spiritual
association. This intersonship circuit is entirely different
from the universal circuit of spirit gravity, which also centers
in the person of the Second Source and Center. All Sons of God
who take origin in the persons of the Paradise Deities are in
direct and constant communication with the Eternal Mother Son.
And such communication is instantaneous; it is independent of
time though sometimes conditioned by space.
7:6.8 The Eternal Son not only has at all
times perfect knowledge concerning the status, thoughts, and
manifold activities of all orders of Paradise sonship, but he
also has perfection of knowledge at all times regarding
everything of spiritual value which exists in the hearts of all
creatures in the primary central creation of eternity and in the
secondary time creations of the co-ordinate Creator Sons.
7. THE SUPREME REVELATION OF THE FATHER
7:7.1 The Eternal Son is a complete,
exclusive, universal, and final revelation of the spirit and the
personality of the Universal Father. All knowledge of, and
information concerning, the Father must come from the Eternal
Son and his Paradise Sons. The Eternal Son is from eternity and
is wholly and without spiritual qualification one with the
Father. In divine personality they are co-ordinate; in spiritual
nature they are equal; in divinity they are identical.
7:7.2 The character of God could not possibly
be intrinsically improved upon in the person of the Son, for the
divine Father is infinitely perfect, but that character and
personality are amplified, by divestment of the nonpersonal and
nonspiritual, for revelation to creature beings. The First
Source and Center is much more than a personality, but all of
the spirit qualities of the father personality of the First
Source and Center are spiritually present in the absolute
personality of the Eternal Son.
7:7.3 The primal Son and his Sons are engaged
in making a universal revelation of the spiritual and personal
nature of the Father to all creation. In the central universe,
the superuniverses, the local universes, or on the inhabited
planets, it is a Paradise Son who reveals the Universal Father
to men and angels. The Eternal Son and his Sons reveal the
avenue of creature approach to the Universal Father. And even we
of high origin understand the Father much more fully as we study
the revelation of his character and personality in the Eternal
Son and in the Sons of the Eternal Son.
7:7.4 The Father comes down to you as a
personality only through the divine Sons of the Eternal Son. And
you attain the Father by this same living way; you ascend to the
Father by the guidance of this group of divine Sons. And this
remains true notwithstanding that your very personality is a
direct bestowal of the Universal Father.
7:7.5 In all these widespread activities of
the far-flung spiritual administration of the Eternal Son, do
not forget that the Son is a person just as truly and actually
as the Father is a person. Indeed, to beings of the onetime
human order the Eternal Son will be more easy to approach than
the Universal Father. In the progress of the pilgrims of time
through the circuits of Havona, you will be competent to attain
the Son long before you are prepared to discern the Father.
7:7.6 More of the character and merciful
nature of the Eternal Son of mercy you should comprehend as you
meditate on the revelation of these divine attributes which was
made in loving service by your own Creator Son, onetime Son of
Man on earth, now the exalted sovereign of your local universe
-- the Son of Man and the Son of God.
7:7.7
Indited by a Divine Counselor assigned to formulate this
statement depicting the Eternal Son of Paradise.