PAPER 115
- THE SUPREME BEING
With God the Father,
sonship is the great relationship. With God the Supreme,
achievement is the prerequisite to status--one must do
something as well as be something.
1. RELATIVITY OF
CONCEPT FRAMES
Partial, incomplete, and
evolving intellects would be helpless in the master
universe, would be unable to form the first rational thought
pattern, were it not for the innate ability of all mind,
high or low, to form a universe frame in which to
think. If mind cannot fathom conclusions, if it cannot
penetrate to true origins, then will such mind unfailingly
postulate conclusions and invent origins that it may have a
means of logical thought within the frame of these
mind-created postulates. And while such universe frames for
creature thought are indispensable to rational intellectual
operations, they are, without exception, erroneous to a
greater or lesser degree.
Conceptual frames of the
universe are only relatively true; they are serviceable
scaffolding which must eventually give way before the
expansions of enlarging cosmic comprehension. The
understandings of truth, beauty, and goodness, morality,
ethics, duty, love, divinity, origin, existence, purpose,
destiny, time, space, even Deity, are only relatively true.
God is much, much more than a Father, but the Father is
man's highest concept of God; nonetheless, the Father-Son
portrayal of Creator-creature relationship will be augmented
by those supermortal conceptions of Deity which will be
attained in Orvonton, in Havona, and on Paradise. Man must
think in a mortal universe frame, but that does not mean
that he cannot envision other and higher frames within which
thought can take place.
In order to facilitate
mortal comprehension of the universe of universes, the
diverse levels of cosmic reality have been designated as
finite, absonite, and absolute. Of these only the absolute
is unqualifiedly eternal, truly existential. Absonites and
finites are derivatives, modifications, qualifications, and
attenuations of the original and primordial absolute reality
of infinity.
The realms of the finite
exist by virtue of the eternal purpose of God. Finite
creatures, high and low, may propound theories, and have
done so, as to the necessity of the finite in the cosmic
economy, but in the last analysis it exists because God so
willed. The universe cannot be explained, neither can a
finite creature offer a rational reason for his own
individual existence without appealing to the prior acts and
pre-existent volition of ancestral beings, Creators or
procreators.
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2. THE ABSOLUTE
BASIS FOR SUPREMACY
From the existential
standpoint, nothing new can happen throughout the galaxies,
for the completion of infinity inherent in the I AM is
eternally present in the seven Absolutes, is functionally
associated in the triunities, and is transmitively
associated in the triodities. But the fact that infinity is
thus existentially present in these absolute associations in
no way makes it impossible to realize new cosmic
experientials. From a finite creature's viewpoint, infinity
contains much that is potential, much that is on the order
of a future possibility rather than a present actuality.
Value is a unique element
in universe reality. We do not comprehend how the value of
anything infinite and divine could possibly be increased.
But we discover that meanings can be modified if not
augmented even in the relations of infinite Deity. To the
experiential universes even divine values are increased as
actualities by enlarged comprehension of reality meanings.
The entire scheme of
universal creation and evolution on all experiencing levels
is apparently a matter of the conversion of potentialities
into actualities; and this transmutation has to do equally
with the realms of space potency, mind potency, and spirit
potency.
The apparent method
whereby the possibilities of the cosmos are brought into
actual existence varies from level to level, being
experiential evolution in the finite and experiential
eventuation in the absonite. Existential infinity is indeed
unqualified in all-inclusiveness, and this very
all-inclusiveness must, perforce, encompass even the
possibility for evolutionary finite experiencing. And the
possibility for such experiential growth becomes a universe
actuality through triodity relationships impinging upon and
in the Supreme.
3. ORIGINAL,
ACTUAL, AND POTENTIAL
The absolute cosmos is
conceptually without limit; to define the extent and nature
of this primal reality is to place qualifications upon
infinity and to attenuate the pure concept of eternity. The
idea of the infinite-eternal, the eternal-infinite, is
unqualified in extent and absolute in fact. There is no
language in the past, present, or future of Urantia adequate
to express the reality of infinity or the infinity of
reality. Man, a finite creature in an infinite cosmos, must
content himself with distorted reflections and attenuated
conceptions of that limitless, boundless, never-beginning,
never-ending existence the comprehension of which is really
beyond his ability.
Mind can never hope to
grasp the concept of an Absolute without attempting first to
break the unity of such a reality. Mind is unifying of all
divergencies, but in the very absence of such divergencies,
mind finds no basis upon which to attempt to formulate
understanding concepts.
The primordial stasis of
infinity requires segmentation prior to human attempts at
comprehension. There is a unity in infinity which has been
expressed in these papers as the I AM--the premier postulate
of the creature mind. But never can a creature understand
how it is that this unity becomes duality, triunity, and
diversity while yet remaining an unqualified unity. Man
encounters a similar problem when he pauses to contemplate
the undivided Deity of Trinity alongside the plural
personalization of God.
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It is only man's distance
from infinity that causes this concept to be expressed as
one word. While infinity is on the one hand UNITY, on the
other it is DIVERSITY without end or limit. Infinity, as it
is observed by finite intelligences, is the maximum paradox
of creature philosophy and finite metaphysics. Though man's
spiritual nature reaches up in the worship experience to the
Father who is infinite, man's intellectual comprehension
capacity is exhausted by the maximum conception of the
Supreme Being. Beyond the Supreme, concepts are increasingly
names; less and less are they true designations of reality;
more and more do they become the creature's projection of
finite understanding toward the superfinite.
One basic conception of
the absolute level involves a postulate of three phases:
1. The Original.
The unqualified concept of the First Source and Center, that
source manifestation of the I AM from which all reality
takes origin.
2. The Actual. The
union of the three Absolutes of actuality, the Second,
Third, and Paradise Sources and Centers. This triodity of
the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and the Paradise Isle
constitutes the actual revelation of the originality of the
First Source and Center.
3. The Potential.
The union of the three Absolutes of potentiality, the Deity,
Unqualified, and Universal Absolutes. This triodity of
existential potentiality constitutes the potential
revelation of the originality of the First Source and
Center.
The interassociation of
the Original, the Actual, and the Potential yields the
tensions within infinity which result in the possibility for
all universe growth; and growth is the nature of the
Sevenfold, the Supreme, and the Ultimate.
In the association of the
Deity, Universal, and Unqualified Absolutes, potentiality is
absolute while actuality is emergent; in the association of
the Second, Third, and Paradise Sources and Centers,
actuality is absolute while potentiality is emergent; in the
originality of the First Source and Center, we cannot say
that either actuality or potentiality is either existent or
emergent--the Father is.
From the time viewpoint,
the Actual is that which was and is; the Potential is that
which is becoming and will be; the Original is that which
is. From the eternity viewpoint, the differences between the
Original, the Actual, and the Potential are not thus
apparent. These triune qualities are not so distinguished on
Paradise-eternity levels. In eternity all is--only has all
not yet been revealed in time and space.
From a creature's
viewpoint, actuality is substance, potentiality is capacity.
Actuality exists centermost and expands therefrom into
peripheral infinity; potentiality comes inward from the
infinity periphery and converges at the center of all
things. Originality is that which first causes and then
balances the dual motions of the cycle of reality
metamorphosis from potentials to actuals and the
potentializing of existing actuals.
The three Absolutes of
potentiality are operative on the purely eternal level of
the cosmos, hence never function as such on subabsolute
levels. On the descending levels of reality the triodity of
potentiality is manifest with the Ultimate and upon the
Supreme. The potential may fail to time-actualize with
respect to a part on some subabsolute level, but never in
the aggregate. The will of God does
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ultimately prevail, not
always concerning the individual but invariably concerning
the total.
It is in the triodity of
actuality that the existents of the cosmos have their
center; be it spirit, mind, or energy, all center in this
association of the Son, the Spirit, and Paradise. The
personality of the spirit Son is the master pattern for all
personality throughout all universes. The substance of the
Paradise Isle is the master pattern of which Havona is a
perfect, and the superuniverses are a perfecting,
revelation. The Conjoint Actor is at one and the same time
the mind activation of cosmic energy, the conceptualization
of spirit purpose, and the integration of the mathematical
causes and effects of the material levels with the
volitional purposes and motives of the spiritual level. In
and to a finite universe the Son, Spirit, and Paradise
function in and upon the Ultimate as he is conditioned and
qualified in the Supreme.
Actuality (of Deity) is
what man seeks in the Paradise ascent. Potentiality (of
human divinity) is what man evolves in that search. The
Original is what makes possible the coexistence and
integration of man the actual, man the potential, and man
the eternal.
The final dynamics of the
cosmos have to do with the continual transfer of reality
from potentiality to actuality. In theory, there may be an
end to this metamorphosis, but in fact, such is impossible
since the Potential and the Actual are both encircuited in
the Original (the I AM), and this identification makes it
forever impossible to place a limit on the developmental
progression of the universe. Whatsoever is identified with
the I AM can never find an end to progression since the
actuality of the potentials of the I AM is absolute, and the
potentiality of the actuals of the I AM is also absolute.
Always will actuals be opening up new avenues of the
realization of hitherto impossible potentials--every human
decision not only actualizes a new reality in human
experience but also opens up a new capacity for human
growth. The man lives in every child, and the morontia
progressor is resident in the mature God-knowing man.
Statics in growth can
never appear in the total cosmos since the basis for
growth--the absolute actuals--is unqualified, and since the
possibilities for growth--the absolute potentials--are
unlimited. From a practical viewpoint the philosophers of
the universe have come to the conclusion that there is no
such thing as an end.
From a circumscribed view
there are, indeed, many ends, many terminations of
activities, but from a larger viewpoint on a higher universe
level, there are no endings, merely transitions from one
phase of development to another. The major chronicity of the
master universe is concerned with the several universe ages,
the Havona, the superuniverse, and the outer universe ages.
But even these basic divisions of sequence relationships
cannot be more than relative landmarks on the unending
highway of eternity.
The final penetration of
the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Supreme Being could
only open up to the progressing creature those absonite
qualities of ultimate divinity which lie beyond the concept
levels of truth, beauty, and goodness.
4. SOURCES OF
SUPREME REALITY
Any consideration of the
origins of God the Supreme must begin with the
Paradise Trinity, for the Trinity is original Deity while
the Supreme is derived
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Deity. Any consideration of
the growth of the Supreme must give consideration to
the existential triodities, for they encompass all absolute
actuality and all infinite potentiality (in conjunction with
the First Source and Center). And the evolutionary Supreme
is the culminating and personally volitional focus of the
transmutation--the transformation--of potentials to actuals
in and on the finite level of existence. The two triodities,
actual and potential, encompass the totality of the
interrelationships of growth in the universes.
The source of the Supreme
is in the Paradise Trinity--eternal, actual, and undivided
Deity. The Supreme is first of all a spirit person, and this
spirit person stems from the Trinity. But the Supreme is
secondly a Deity of growth--evolutionary growth--and this
growth derives from the two triodities, actual and
potential.
If it is difficult to
comprehend that the infinite triodities can function on the
finite level, pause to consider that their very infinity
must in itself contain the potentiality of the finite;
infinity encompasses all things ranging from the lowest and
most qualified finite existence to the highest and
unqualifiedly absolute realities.
It is not so difficult to
comprehend that the infinite does contain the finite as it
is to understand just how this infinite actually is manifest
to the finite. But the Thought Adjusters indwelling mortal
man are one of the eternal proofs that even the absolute God
(as absolute) can and does actually make direct contact with
even the lowest and least of all universe will creatures.
The triodities which
collectively encompass the actual and the potential are
manifest on the finite level in conjunction with the Supreme
Being. The technique of such manifestation is both direct
and indirect: direct in so far as triodity relations
repercuss directly in the Supreme and indirect in so far as
they are derived through the eventuated level of the
absonite.
Supreme reality, which is
total finite reality, is in process of dynamic growth
between the unqualified potentials of outer space and the
unqualified actuals at the center of all things. The finite
domain thus factualizes through the co-operation of the
absonite agencies of Paradise and the Supreme Creator
Personalities of time. The act of maturing the qualified
possibilities of the three great potential Absolutes is the
absonite function of the Architects of the Master Universe
and their transcendental associates. And when these
eventualities have attained to a certain point of
maturation, the Supreme Creator Personalities emerge from
Paradise to engage in the agelong task of bringing the
evolving universes into factual being.
The growth of Supremacy
derives from the triodities; the spirit person of the
Supreme, from the Trinity; but the power prerogatives of the
Almighty are predicated on the divinity successes of God the
Sevenfold, while the conjoining of the power prerogatives of
the Almighty Supreme with the spirit person of God the
Supreme takes place by virtue of the ministry of the
Conjoint Actor, who bestowed the mind of the Supreme as the
conjoining factor in this evolutionary Deity.
5. RELATION OF
THE SUPREME TO THE PARADISE TRINITY
The Supreme Being is
absolutely dependent on the existence and action of the
Paradise Trinity for the reality of his personal and spirit
nature. While the
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growth of the Supreme is a
matter of triodity relationship, the spirit personality of
God the Supreme is dependent upon, and is derived from, the
Paradise Trinity, which ever remains as the absolute
center-source of perfect and infinite stability around which
the evolutionary growth of the Supreme progressively
unfolds.
The function of the
Trinity is related to the function of the Supreme, for the
Trinity is functional on all (total) levels, including the
level of the function of Supremacy. But as the age of Havona
gives way to the age of the superuniverses, so does the
discernible action of the Trinity as immediate creator give
way to the creative acts of the children of the Paradise
Deities.
6. RELATION OF
THE SUPREME TO THE TRIODITIES
The triodity of actuality
continues to function directly in the post-Havona epochs;
Paradise gravity grasps the basic units of material
existence, the spirit gravity of the Eternal Son operates
directly upon the fundamental values of spirit existence,
and the mind gravity of the Conjoint Actor unerringly
clutches all vital meanings of intellectual existence.
But as each stage of
creative activity proceeds out through uncharted space, it
functions and exists farther and farther removed from direct
action by the creative forces and divine personalities of
central emplacement--the absolute Isle of Paradise and the
infinite Deities resident thereon. These successive levels
of cosmic existence become, therefore, increasingly
dependent upon developments within the three Absolute
potentialities of infinity.
The Supreme Being embraces
possibilities for cosmic ministry that are not apparently
manifested in the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, or the
nonpersonal realities of the Isle of Paradise. This
statement is made with due regard for the absoluteness of
these three basic actualities, but the growth of the Supreme
is not only predicated on these actualities of Deity and
Paradise but is also involved in developments within the
Deity, Universal, and Unqualified Absolutes.
The Supreme not only grows
as the Creators and creatures of the evolving universes
attain to Godlikeness, but this finite Deity also
experiences growth as a result of the creature and Creator
mastery of the finite possibilities of the grand universe.
The motion of the Supreme is twofold: intensively toward
Paradise and Deity and extensively toward the limitlessness
of the Absolutes of potential.
In the present universe
age this dual motion is revealed in the descending and
ascending personalities of the grand universe. The Supreme
Creator Personalities and all their divine associates are
reflective of the outward, diverging motion of the Supreme,
while the ascending pilgrims from the seven superuniverses
are indicative of the inward, converging trend of Supremacy.
Always is the finite Deity
seeking for dual correlation, inward toward Paradise and the
Deities thereof and outward toward infinity and the
Absolutes therein. The mighty eruption of the
Paradise-creative divinity personalizing in the Creator Sons
and powerizing in the power controllers, signifies the vast
outsurge of Supremacy into the domains of potentiality,
while the endless procession of the ascending creatures of
the grand universe witnesses the mighty insurge of Supremacy
toward unity with Paradise Deity.
Human beings have learned
that the motion of the invisible may sometimes be discerned
by observing its effects on the visible; and we in the
universes have
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long since learned to detect
the movements and trends of Supremacy by observing the
repercussions of such evolutions in the personalities and
patterns of the grand universe.
Though we are not sure, we
believe that, as a finite reflection of Paradise Deity, the
Supreme is engaged in an eternal progression into outer
space; but as a qualification of the three Absolute
potentials of outer space, this Supreme Being is forever
seeking for Paradise coherence. And these dual motions seem
to account for most of the basic activities in the presently
organized universes.
7. THE NATURE OF
THE SUPREME
In the Deity of the
Supreme the Father-I AM has achieved relatively complete
liberation from the limitations inherent in infinity of
status, eternity of being, and absoluteness of nature. But
God the Supreme has been freed from all existential
limitations only by having become subject to experiential
qualifications of universal function. In attaining capacity
for experience, the finite God also becomes subject to the
necessity therefor; in achieving liberation from eternity,
the Almighty encounters the barriers of time; and the
Supreme could only know growth and development as a
consequence of partiality of existence and incompleteness of
nature, nonabsoluteness of being.
All this must be according
to the Father's plan, which has predicated finite progress
upon effort, creature achievement upon perseverance, and
personality development upon faith. By thus ordaining the
experience-evolution of the Supreme, the Father has made it
possible for finite creatures to exist in the universes and,
by experiential progression, sometime to attain the divinity
of Supremacy.
Including the Supreme and
even the Ultimate, all reality, excepting the unqualified
values of the seven Absolutes, is relative. The fact of
Supremacy is predicated on Paradise power, Son personality,
and Conjoint action, but the growth of the Supreme is
involved in the Deity Absolute, the Unqualified Absolute,
and the Universal Absolute. And this synthesizing and
unifying Deity--God the Supreme--is the personification of
the finite shadow cast athwart the grand universe by the
infinite unity of the unsearchable nature of the Paradise
Father, the First Source and Center.
To the extent that the
triodities are directly operative on the finite level, they
impinge upon the Supreme, who is the Deity focalization and
cosmic summation of the finite qualifications of the natures
of the Absolute Actual and the Absolute Potential.
The Paradise Trinity is
considered to be the absolute inevitability; the Seven
Master Spirits are apparently Trinity inevitabilities; the
power-mind-spirit-personality actualization of the Supreme
must be the evolutionary inevitability.
God the Supreme does not
appear to have been inevitable in unqualified infinity, but
he seems to be on all relativity levels. He is the
indispensable focalizer, summarizer, and encompasser of
evolutionary experience, effectively unifying the results of
this mode of reality perception in his Deity nature. And all
this he appears to do for the purpose of contributing to the
appearance of the inevitable eventuation, the
superexperience and superfinite manifestation of God the
Ultimate.
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The Supreme Being cannot be
fully appreciated without taking into consideration source,
function, and destiny: relationship to the originating
Trinity, the universe of activity, and the Trinity Ultimate
of immediate destiny.
By the process of
summating evolutionary experience the Supreme connects the
finite with the absonite, even as the mind of the Conjoint
Actor integrates the divine spirituality of the personal Son
with the immutable energies of the Paradise pattern, and as
the presence of the Universal Absolute unifies Deity
activation with the Unqualified reactivity. And this unity
must be a revelation of the undetected working of the
original unity of the First Father-Cause and Source-Pattern
of all things and all beings.
[Sponsored by a Mighty
Messenger temporarily sojourning on Urantia.] |