The Urantia Book
PAPER 9
RELATION OF THE INFINITE SPIRIT TO THE UNIVERSE
Revealed on Urantia by a Divine
Counselor of Uversa commissioned by the Ancients of Days to
portray the nature and work of the Infinite Spiri
9:0.1 A STRANGE thing occurred when, in the
presence of Paradise, the Universal Father and the Eternal Son
unite to personalize themselves. Nothing in this eternity
situation foreshadows that the Conjoint Actor would personalize
as an unlimited spirituality co-ordinated with absolute mind and
endowed with unique prerogatives of energy manipulation. His
coming into being completes the Father's liberation from the
bonds of centralized perfection and from the fetters of
personality absolutism. And this liberation is disclosed in the
amazing power of the Conjoint Creator to create beings well
adapted to serve as ministering spirits even to the material
creatures of the subsequently evolving universes.
9:0.2 The Father is infinite in love and
volition, in spiritual thought and purpose; he is the universal
upholder. The Son is infinite in wisdom and truth, in spiritual
expression and interpretation; he is the universal revealer.
Paradise is infinite in potential for force endowment and in
capacity for energy dominance; it is the universal stabilizer.
The Conjoint Actor possesses unique prerogatives of synthesis,
infinite capacity to co-ordinate all existing universe energies,
all actual universe spirits, and all real universe intellects;
the Third Source and Center is the universal unifier of the
manifold energies and diverse creations which have appeared in
consequence of the divine plan and the eternal purpose of the
Universal Father.
9:0.3 The Infinite Spirit, the Conjoint
Creator, is a universal and divine minister. The Spirit
unceasingly ministers the Son's mercy and the Father's love,
even in harmony with the stable, unvarying, and righteous
justice of the Paradise Trinity. His influence and personalities
are ever near you; they really know and truly understand you.
9:0.4 Throughout the universes the agencies of
the Conjoint Actor ceaselessly manipulate the forces and
energies of all space. Like the First Source and Center, the
Third is responsive to both the spiritual and the material. The
Conjoint Actor is the revelation of the unity of God, in whom
all things consist -- things, meanings, and values; energies,
minds, and spirits.
9:0.5 The Infinite Spirit pervades all space;
he indwells the circle of eternity; and the Spirit, like the
Father and the Son, is perfect and changeless -- absolute.
1. ATTRIBUTES OF THE THIRD SOURCE AND
CENTER
9:1.1 The Third Source and Center is known by
many names, all designative of relationship and in recognition
of function: As God the Spirit, he is the personality
co-ordinate and divine equal of God the Son and God the Father.
As the Infinite Spirit, he is an omnipresent spiritual
influence. As the Universal Manipulator, he is the ancestor of
the power-control creatures and the activator of the cosmic
forces of space. As the Conjoint Actor, he is the joint
representative and partnership executive of the Father-Son. As
the Absolute Mind, he is the source of the endowment of
intellect throughout the universes. As the God of Action, he is
the apparent ancestor of motion, change, and relationship.
9:1.2 Some of the attributes of the Third
Source and Center are derived from the Father, some from the
Son, while still others are not observed to be actively and
personally present in either the Father or the Son -- attributes
that can hardly be explained except by assuming that the
Father-Son partnership which eternalizes the Third Source and
Center consistently functions in consonance with, and in
recognition of, the eternal fact of the absoluteness of
Paradise. The Conjoint Creator embodies the fullness of the
combined and infinite concepts of the First and Second Persons
of Deity.
9:1.3 While you envisage the Father as an
original creator and the Son as a spiritual administrator, you
should think of the Third Source and Center as a universal
co-ordinator, a minister of unlimited co-operation. The Conjoint
Actor is the correlator of all actual reality; he is the Deity
repository of the Father's thought and the Son's word and in
action is eternally regardful of the material absoluteness of
the central Isle. The Paradise Trinity has ordained the
universal order of progress, and the providence of God is
the domain of the Conjoint Creator and the evolving Supreme
Being. No actual or actualizing reality can escape eventual
relationship with the Third Source and Center.
9:1.4 The Universal Father presides over the
realms of pre-energy, prespirit, and personality; the Eternal
Son dominates the spheres of spiritual activities; the presence
of the Isle of Paradise unifies the domain of physical energy
and materializing power; the Conjoint Actor operates not only as
an infinite spirit representing the Son but also as a universal
manipulator of the forces and energies of Paradise, thus
bringing into existence the universal and absolute mind. The
Conjoint Actor functions throughout the grand universe as a
positive and distinct personality, especially in the higher
spheres of spiritual values, physical-energy relationships, and
true mind meanings. He functions specifically wherever and
whenever energy and spirit associate and interact; he dominates
all reactions with mind, wields great power in the spiritual
world, and exerts a mighty influence over energy and matter. At
all times the Third Source is expressive of the nature of the
First Source and Center.
9:1.5 The Third Source and Center perfectly
and without qualification shares the omnipresence of the First
Source and Center, sometimes being called the Omnipresent
Spirit. In a peculiar and very personal manner the God of mind
shares the omniscience of the Universal Father and his Eternal
Son; the knowledge of the Spirit is profound and complete. The
Conjoint Creator manifests certain phases of the omnipotence of
the Universal Father but is actually omnipotent only in the
domain of mind. The Third Person of Deity is the intellectual
center and the universal administrator of the mind realms;
herein is he absolute -- his sovereignty is unqualified.
9:1.6 The Conjoint Actor seems to be motivated
by the Father-Son partnership, but all his actions appear to
recognize the Father-Paradise relationship. At times and in
certain functions he seems to compensate for the incompleteness
of the development of the experiential Deities -- God the
Supreme and God the Ultimate.
9:1.7 And herein is an infinite mystery: That
the Infinite simultaneously revealed his infinity in the Son and
as Paradise, and then there springs into existence a being equal
to God in divinity, reflective of the Son's spiritual nature,
and capable of activating the Paradise pattern, a being
provisionally subordinate in sovereignty but in many ways
apparently the most versatile in action. And such
apparent superiority in action is disclosed in an attribute of
the Third Source and Center which is superior even to physical
gravity -- the universal manifestation of the Isle of Paradise.
9:1.8 In addition to this supercontrol of
energy and things physical, the Infinite Spirit is superbly
endowed with those attributes of patience, mercy, and love which
are so exquisitely revealed in his spiritual ministry. The
Spirit is supremely competent to minister love and to overshadow
justice with mercy. God the Spirit possesses all the supernal
kindness and merciful affection of the Original and Eternal Son.
The universe of your origin is being forged out between the
anvil of justice and the hammer of suffering; but those who
wield the hammer are the children of mercy, the spirit offspring
of the Infinite Spirit.
2. THE OMNIPRESENT SPIRIT
9:2.1 God is spirit in a threefold sense: He
himself is spirit; in his Son he appears as spirit without
qualification; in the Conjoint Actor, as spirit allied with
mind. And in addition to these spiritual realities, we think we
discern levels of experiential spirit phenomena -- the spirits
of the Supreme Being, Ultimate Deity, and Deity Absolute.
9:2.2 The Infinite Spirit is just as much a
complement of the Eternal Son as the Son is a complement of the
Universal Father. The Eternal Son is a spiritualized
personalization of the Father; the Infinite Spirit is a
personalized spiritualization of the Eternal Son and the
Universal Father.
9:2.3 There are many untrammeled lines of
spiritual force and sources of supermaterial power linking the
people of Urantia directly with the Deities of Paradise. There
exist the connection of the Thought Adjusters direct with the
Universal Father, the widespread influence of the
spiritual-gravity urge of the Eternal Son, and the spiritual
presence of the Conjoint Creator. There is a difference in
function between the spirit of the Son and the spirit of the
Spirit. The Third Person in his spiritual ministry may function
as mind plus spirit or as spirit alone.
9:2.4 In addition to these Paradise presences,
Urantians benefit by the spiritual influences and activities of
the local and the superuniverse, with their almost endless array
of loving personalities who ever lead the true of purpose and
the honest of heart upward and inward towards the ideals of
divinity and the goal of supreme perfection.
9:2.5 The presence of the universal spirit of
the Eternal Son we know -- we can unmistakably recognize
it. The presence of the Infinite Spirit, the Third Person of
Deity, even mortal man may know, for material creatures can
actually experience the beneficence of this divine influence
which functions as the Holy Spirit of local universe bestowal
upon the races of mankind. Human beings can also in some degree
become conscious of the Adjuster, the impersonal presence of the
Universal Father. These divine spirits which work for man's
uplifting and spiritualization all act in unison and in perfect
co-operation. They are as one in the spiritual operation of the
plans of mortal ascension and perfection attainment.
3. THE UNIVERSAL MANIPULATOR
9:3.1 The Isle of Paradise is the source and
substance of physical gravity; and that should be sufficient to
inform you that gravity is one of the most real and
eternally dependable things in the whole physical universe of
universes. Gravity cannot be modified or annulled except by the
forces and energies conjointly sponsored by the Father and the
Son, which have been intrusted to, and are functionally
associated with, the person of the Third Source and Center.
9:3.2 The Infinite Spirit possesses a unique
and amazing power -- antigravity. This power is not
functionally (observably) present in either the Father or the
Son. This ability to withstand the pull of material gravity,
inherent in the Third Source, is revealed in the personal
reactions of the Conjoint Actor to certain phases of universe
relationships. And this unique attribute is transmissible to
certain of the higher personalities of the Infinite Spirit.
9:3.3 Antigravity can annul gravity within a
local frame; it does so by the exercise of equal force presence.
It operates only with reference to material gravity, and it is
not the action of mind. The gravity-resistant phenomenon of a
gyroscope is a fair illustration of the effect of
antigravity but of no value to illustrate the cause of
antigravity.
9:3.4 Still further does the Conjoint Actor
display powers which can transcend force and neutralize energy.
Such powers operate by slowing down energy to the point of
materialization and by other techniques unknown to you.
9:3.5 The Conjoint Creator is not energy nor
the source of energy nor the destiny of energy; he is the
manipulator of energy. The Conjoint Creator is action --
motion, change, modification, co-ordination, stabilization, and
equilibrium. The energies subject to the direct or indirect
control of Paradise are by nature responsive to the acts of the
Third Source and Center and his manifold agencies.
9:3.6 The universe of universes is permeated
by the power-control creatures of the Third Source and Center:
physical controllers, power directors, power centers, and other
representatives of the God of Action who have to do with the
regulation and stabilization of physical energies. These unique
creatures of physical function all possess varying attributes of
power control, such as antigravity, which they utilize in their
efforts to establish the physical equilibrium of the matter and
energies of the grand universe.
9:3.7 All these material activities of the God
of Action appear to relate his function to the Isle of Paradise,
and indeed the agencies of power are all regardful of, even
dependent on, the absoluteness of the eternal Isle. But the
Conjoint Actor does not act for, or in response to, Paradise. He
acts, personally, for the Father and the Son. Paradise is not a
person. The nonpersonal, impersonal, and otherwise not personal
doings of the Third Source and Center are all volitional acts of
the Conjoint Actor himself; they are not reflections,
derivations, or repercussions of anything or anybody.
9:3.8 Paradise is the pattern of infinity; the
God of Action is the activator of that pattern. Paradise is the
material fulcrum of infinity; the agencies of the Third Source
and Center are the levers of intelligence which motivate the
material level and inject spontaneity into the mechanism of the
physical creation.
4. THE ABSOLUTE MIND
9:4.1 There is an intellectual nature of the
Third Source and Center that is distinct from his physical and
spiritual attributes. Such a nature is hardly contactable, but
it is associable -- intellectually though not personally. It is
distinguishable from the physical attributes and the spiritual
character of the Third Person on mind levels of function, but to
the discernment of personalities this nature never functions
independently of physical or spiritual manifestations.
9:4.2 The absolute mind is the mind of the
Third Person; it is inseparable from the personality of God the
Spirit. Mind, in functioning beings, is not separated from
energy or spirit, or both. Mind is not inherent in energy;
energy is receptive and responsive to mind; mind can be
superimposed upon energy, but consciousness is not inherent in
the purely material level. Mind does not have to be added to
pure spirit, for spirit is innately conscious and identifying.
Spirit is always intelligent, minded in some way. It may
be this mind or that mind, it may be premind or supermind, even
spirit mind, but it does the equivalent of thinking and knowing.
The insight of spirit transcends, supervenes, and theoretically
antedates the consciousness of mind.
9:4.3 The Conjoint Creator is absolute only in
the domain of mind, in the realms of universal intelligence. The
mind of the Third Source and Center is infinite; it utterly
transcends the active and functioning mind circuits of the
universe of universes. The mind endowment of the seven
superuniverses is derived from the Seven Master Spirits, the
primary personalities of the Conjoint Creator. These Master
Spirits distribute mind to the grand universe as the cosmic
mind, and your local universe is pervaded by the Nebadon variant
of the Orvonton type of cosmic mind.
9:4.4 Infinite mind ignores time, ultimate
mind transcends time, cosmic mind is conditioned by time. And so
with space: The Infinite Mind is independent of space, but as
descent is made from the infinite to the adjutant levels of
mind, intellect must increasingly reckon with the fact and
limitations of space.
9:4.5 Cosmic force responds to mind even as
cosmic mind responds to spirit. Spirit is divine purpose, and
spirit mind is divine purpose in action. Energy is thing, mind
is meaning, spirit is value. Even in time and space, mind
establishes those relative relationships between energy and
spirit which are suggestive of mutual kinship in eternity.
9:4.6 Mind transmutes the values of spirit
into the meanings of intellect; volition has power to bring the
meanings of mind to fruit in both the material and spiritual
domains. The Paradise ascent involves a relative and
differential growth in spirit, mind, and energy. The personality
is the unifier of these components of experiential
individuality.
5. THE MINISTRY OF MIND
9:5.1 The Third Source and Center is infinite
in mind. If the universe should grow to infinity, still his mind
potential would be adequate to endow limitless numbers of
creatures with suitable minds and other prerequisites of
intellect.
9:5.2 In the domain of created mind the
Third Person, with his co-ordinate and subordinate associates,
rules supreme. The realms of creature mind are of exclusive
origin in the Third Source and Center; he is the bestower of
mind. Even the Father fragments find it impossible to indwell
the minds of men until the way has been properly prepared for
them by the mind action and spiritual function of the Infinite
Spirit.
9:5.3 The unique feature of mind is that it
can be bestowed upon such a wide range of life. Through his
creative and creature associates the Third Source and Center
ministers to all minds on all spheres. He ministers to human and
subhuman intellect through the adjutants of the local universes
and, through the agency of the physical controllers, ministers
even to the lowest nonexperiencing entities of the most
primitive types of living things. And always is the direction of
mind a ministry of mind-spirit or mind-energy personalities.
9:5.4 Since the Third Person of Deity is the
source of mind, it is quite natural that the evolutionary will
creatures find it easier to form comprehensible concepts of the
Infinite Spirit than they do of either the Eternal Son or the
Universal Father. The reality of the Conjoint Creator is
disclosed imperfectly in the very existence of human mind. The
Conjoint Creator is the ancestor of the cosmic mind, and the
mind of man is an individualized circuit, an impersonal portion,
of that cosmic mind as it is bestowed in a local universe by a
Creative Daughter of the Third Source and Center.
9:5.5 Because the Third Person is the source
of mind, do not presume to reckon that all phenomena of mind are
divine. Human intellect is rooted in the material origin of the
animal races. Universe intelligence is no more a true revelation
of God who is mind than is physical nature a true revelation of
the beauty and harmony of Paradise. Perfection is in nature, but
nature is not perfect. The Conjoint Creator is the source of
mind, but mind is not the Conjoint Creator.
9:5.6 Mind, on Urantia, is a compromise
between the essence of thought perfection and the evolving
mentality of your immature human nature. The plan for your
intellectual evolution is, indeed, one of sublime perfection,
but you are far short of that divine goal as you function in the
tabernacles of the flesh. Mind is truly of divine origin, and it
does have a divine destiny, but your mortal minds are not yet of
divine dignity.
9:5.7 Too often, all too often, you mar your
minds by insincerity and sear them with unrighteousness; you
subject them to animal fear and distort them by useless anxiety.
Therefore, though the source of mind is divine, mind as you know
it on your world of ascension can hardly become the object of
great admiration, much less of adoration or worship. The
contemplation of the immature and inactive human intellect
should lead only to reactions of humility.
6. THE MIND-GRAVITY CIRCUIT
9:6.1 The Third Source and Center, the
universal intelligence, is personally conscious of every mind,
every intellect, in all creation, and he maintains a personal
and perfect contact with all these physical, morontial, and
spiritual creatures of mind endowment in the far-flung
universes. All these activities of mind are grasped in the
absolute mind-gravity circuit which focalizes in the Third
Source and Center and is a part of the personal consciousness of
the Infinite Spirit.
9:6.2 Much as the Father draws all personality
to himself, and as the Son attracts all spiritual reality, so
does the Conjoint Actor exercise a drawing power on all minds;
he unqualifiedly dominates and controls the universal mind
circuit. All true and genuine intellectual values, all divine
thoughts and perfect ideas, are unerringly drawn into this
absolute circuit of mind.
9:6.3 Mind gravity can operate independently
of material and spiritual gravity, but wherever and whenever the
latter two impinge, mind gravity always functions. When all
three are associated, personality gravity may embrace the
material creature -- physical or morontial, finite or absonite.
But irrespective of this, the endowment of mind even in
impersonal beings qualifies them to think and endows them with
consciousness despite the total absence of personality.
9:6.4 Selfhood of personality dignity, human
or divine, immortal or potentially immortal, does not however
originate in either spirit, mind, or matter; it is the bestowal
of the Universal Father. Neither is the interaction of spirit,
mind, and material gravity a prerequisite to the appearance of
personality gravity. The Father's circuit may embrace a
mind-material being who is unresponsive to spirit gravity, or it
may include a mind-spirit being who is unresponsive to material
gravity. The operation of personality gravity is always a
volitional act of the Universal Father.
9:6.5 While mind is energy associated in
purely material beings and spirit associated in purely spiritual
personalities, innumerable orders of personality, including the
human, possess minds that are associated with both energy and
spirit. The spiritual aspects of creature mind unfailingly
respond to the spirit-gravity pull of the Eternal Son; the
material features respond to the gravity urge of the material
universe.
9:6.6 Cosmic mind, when not associated with
either energy or spirit, is subject to the gravity demands of
neither material nor spiritual circuits. Pure mind is subject
only to the universal gravity grasp of the Conjoint Actor. Pure
mind is close of kin to infinite mind, and infinite mind (the
theoretical co-ordinate of the absolutes of spirit and energy)
is apparently a law in itself.
9:6.7 The greater the spirit-energy
divergence, the greater the observable function of mind; the
lesser the diversity of energy and spirit, the lesser the
observable function of mind. Apparently, the maximum function of
the cosmic mind is in the time universes of space. Here mind
seems to function in a mid-zone between energy and spirit, but
this is not true of the higher levels of mind; on Paradise,
energy and spirit are essentially one.
9:6.8 The mind-gravity circuit is dependable;
it emanates from the Third Person of Deity on Paradise, but not
all the observable function of mind is predictable. Throughout
all known creation there parallels this circuit of mind some
little-understood presence whose function is not predictable. We
believe that this unpredictability is partly attributable to the
function of the Universal Absolute. What this function is, we do
not know; what actuates it, we can only conjecture; concerning
its relation to creatures, we can only speculate.
9:6.9 Certain phases of the unpredictability
of finite mind may be due to the incompleteness of the Supreme
Being, and there is a vast zone of activities wherein the
Conjoint Actor and the Universal Absolute may possibly be
tangent. There is much about mind that is unknown, but of this
we are sure: The Infinite Spirit is the perfect expression of
the mind of the Creator to all creatures; the Supreme Being is
the evolving expression of the minds of all creatures to their
Creator.
7. UNIVERSE REFLECTIVITY
9:7.1 The Conjoint Actor is able to
co-ordinate all levels of universe actuality in such manner as
to make possible the simultaneous recognition of the mental, the
material, and the spiritual. This is the phenomenon of
universe reflectivity, that unique and inexplicable power to
see, hear, sense, and know all things as they transpire
throughout a superuniverse, and to focalize, by reflectivity,
all this information and knowledge at any desired point. The
action of reflectivity is shown in perfection on each of the
headquarters worlds of the seven superuniverses. It is also
operative throughout all sectors of the superuniverses and
within the boundaries of the local universes. Reflectivity
finally focalizes on Paradise.
9:7.2 The phenomenon of reflectivity, as it is
disclosed on the superuniverse headquarters worlds in the
amazing performances of the reflective personalities there
stationed, represents the most complex interassociation of all
phases of existence to be found in all creation. Lines of spirit
can be traced back to the Son, physical energy to Paradise, and
mind to the Third Source; but in the extraordinary phenomenon of
universe reflectivity there is a unique and exceptional
unification of all three, so associated as to enable the
universe rulers to know about remote conditions instantaneously,
simultaneously with their occurrence.
9:7.3 Much of the technique of reflectivity we
comprehend, but there are many phases which truly baffle us. We
know that the Conjoint Actor is the universe center of the mind
circuit, that he is the ancestor of the cosmic mind, and that
cosmic mind operates under the dominance of the absolute mind
gravity of the Third Source and Center. We know further that the
circuits of the cosmic mind influence the intellectual levels of
all known existence; they contain the universal space reports,
and just as certainly they focus in the Seven Master Spirits and
converge in the Third Source and Center.
9:7.4 The relationship between the finite
cosmic mind and the divine absolute mind appears to be evolving
in the experiential mind of the Supreme. We are taught that, in
the dawn of time, this experiential mind was bestowed upon the
Supreme by the Infinite Spirit, and we conjecture that certain
features of the phenomenon of reflectivity can be accounted for
only by postulating the activity of the Supreme Mind. If the
Supreme is not concerned in reflectivity, we are at a loss to
explain the intricate transactions and unerring operations of
this consciousness of the cosmos.
9:7.5 Reflectivity appears to be omniscience
within the limits of the experiential finite and may represent
the emergence of the presence-consciousness of the Supreme
Being. If this assumption is true, then the utilization of
reflectivity in any of its phases is equivalent to partial
contact with the consciousness of the Supreme.
8. PERSONALITIES OF THE INFINITE SPIRIT
9:8.1 The Infinite Spirit possesses full power
to transmit many of his powers and prerogatives to his
co-ordinate and subordinate personalities and agencies.
9:8.2 The first Deity-creating act of the
Infinite Spirit, functioning apart from the Trinity but in some
unrevealed association with the Father and the Son, personalized
in the existence of the Seven Master Spirits of Paradise, the
distributors of the Infinite Spirit to the universes.
9:8.3 There is no direct representative of the
Third Source and Center on the headquarters of a superuniverse.
Each of these seven creations is dependent on one of the Master
Spirits of Paradise, who acts through the seven Reflective
Spirits situated at the capital of the superuniverse.
9:8.4 The next and continuing creative act of
the Infinite Spirit is disclosed, from time to time, in the
production of the Creative Spirits. Every time the Universal
Father and the Eternal Son become parent to a Creator Son, the
Infinite Spirit becomes ancestor to a local universe Creative
Spirit who becomes the close associate of that Creator Son in
all subsequent universe experience.
9:8.5 Just as it is necessary to distinguish
between the Eternal Son and the Creator Sons, so it is necessary
to differentiate between the Infinite Spirit and the Creative
Spirits, the local universe co-ordinates of the Creator Sons.
What the Infinite Spirit is to the total creation, a Creative
Spirit is to a local universe.
9:8.6 The Third Source and Center is
represented in the grand universe by a vast array of ministering
spirits, messengers, teachers, adjudicators, helpers, and
advisers, together with supervisors of certain circuits of
physical, morontial, and spiritual nature. Not all of these
beings are personalities in the strict meaning of the term.
Personality of the finite-creature variety is characterized by:
1. Subjective self-consciousness.
2. Objective response to the
Father's personality circuit.
9:8.7 There are creator personalities and
creature personalities, and in addition to these two fundamental
types there are personalities of the Third Source and Center,
beings who are personal to the Infinite Spirit, but who are not
unqualifiedly personal to creature beings. These Third Source
personalities are not a part of the Father's personality
circuit. First Source personality and Third Source personality
are mutually contactable; all personality is contactable.
9:8.8 The Father bestows personality by his
personal free will. Why he does so we can only conjecture; how
he does so we do not know. Neither do we know why the Third
Source bestows non-Father personality, but this the Infinite
Spirit does in his own behalf, in creative conjunction with the
Eternal Son and in numerous ways unknown to you. The Infinite
Spirit can also act for the Father in the bestowal of First
Source personality.
9:8.9 There are numerous types of Third Source
personalities. The Infinite Spirit bestows Third Source
personality upon numerous groups who are not included in the
Father's personality circuit, such as certain of the power
directors. Likewise does the Infinite Spirit treat as
personalities numerous groups of beings, such as the Creative
Spirits, who are in a class by themselves in their relations to
encircuited creatures of the Father.
9:8.10 Both First Source and Third Source
personalities are endowed with all and more than man associates
with the concept of personality; they have minds embracing
memory, reason, judgment, creative imagination, idea
association, decision, choice, and numerous additional powers of
intellect wholly unknown to mortals. With few exceptions the
orders revealed to you possess form and distinct individuality;
they are real beings. A majority of them are visible to all
orders of spirit existence.
9:8.11 Even you will be able to see your
spiritual associates of the lower orders as soon as you are
delivered from the limited vision of your present material eyes
and have been endowed with a morontia form with its enlarged
sensitivity to the reality of spiritual things.
9:8.12 The functional family of the Third
Source and Center, as it is revealed in these narratives,
falls into three great groups:
9:8.13 I. The Supreme Spirits. A group
of composite origin that embraces, among others, the following
orders:
1. The Seven Master Spirits of
Paradise.
2. The Reflective Spirits of the
Superuniverses.
3. The Creative Spirits of the Local
Universes.
9:8.14 II. The Power Directors. A group
of control creatures and agencies that function throughout all
organized space.
9:8.15 III. The Personalities of the
Infinite Spirit. This designation does not necessarily imply
that these beings are Third Source personalities though some of
them are unique as will creatures. They are usually grouped in
three major classifications:
1. The Higher Personalities of the
Infinite Spirit.
2. The Messenger Hosts of Space.
3. The Ministering Spirits of Time.
9:8.16 These groups serve on Paradise, in the
central or residential universe, in the superuniverses, and they
embrace orders that function in the local universes, even to the
constellations, systems, and planets.
9:8.17 The spirit personalities of the vast
family of the Divine and Infinite Spirit are forever dedicated
to the service of the ministry of the love of God and the mercy
of the Son to all the intelligent creatures of the evolutionary
worlds of time and space. These spirit beings constitute the
living ladder whereby mortal man climbs from chaos to glory.
9:8.18
Revealed on Urantia by a Divine Counselor of Uversa commissioned
by the Ancients of Days to portray the nature and work of the
Infinite Spirit.
