Someday we will get to the end of the Absonite road and some day the whole Master Universe will be finished. It will be done. And God the Ultimate will be a finished being and this will mean the complete function of deity on the seventh level. Well is it all over then? No, it’s not all over because things can happen.
Let’s go back to the beginning now and consider what things were like just before the creative level was reached. At the beginning of all things, we have, what I call the zero universe age, or just before the first universe age, we have two existential deities. The Father and the Son and they have a power platform for operations – the Isle of Paradise. And what do they do? They produce a being equal to themselves, achieve the union of the trinity, the first trinity, and produce a universe which is limited as to quantity, but unlimited as to quality. I am sure they could have filled all infinity with Havona, but they chose not to. They limited their creative activity to one billion worlds. But they didn’t limit it as to the quality of divinity expressed in that perfect creation. This creation is undilutedly divine. But it is not infinite. It is important that something can be perfect without filling everything. Do you follow me?
Now, Havona serves as a nucleus for the seven superuniverses. Right? One of the characteristics of a nucleus is that it exists in relation to a cytoplasm – the white of the egg. We go back to eggs again – I love to use eggs as an example. (Audience member: “I don’t like them, they repel me.”) You only have to visualize them; you don’t have to eat them.
Havona characteristics are transmitted out here as beings come out here. And when this universe is finished and the seven superuniverses are finished, I think we are going to have another nucleus – the second nucleus.
The appearance of the first nucleus is associated with the appearance of the Paradise Trinity. The development of the second nucleus which is the Grand Universe, meaning the seven superuniverses as dependent on the Central Universe, the appearance of this second nucleus is also associated with the formation of a trinity; the first experiential trinity. This is the trinity made up of the Supreme Being, the Supreme Creators, and the Architects of the Master Universe.
I don’t think there will be any nucleus formed when the first outer space level is perfected. I think the four outer space levels are successive, cytoplasmic areas in relation to this continuing nucleus. Because not until all four outer space levels have been completed, do we again witness the formation of a trinity. It takes the appearance, the emergence of God the Ultimate to produce the second experiential trinity; made up of the Supreme Being, the Ultimate and this mysterious, unrevealed consummator of universe destiny.
Now, is this the end? I don’t think so. You see there is still the Deity Absolute. We’ve come back now to the yolk of the egg. Could the Deity Absolute ever being experientialized? The answer is “No”. You have to exhaust infinity to do that. What’s going to happen, is we are at a deadlock or an impasse. This second experiential trinity has a function which suggests something larger than the Master Universe.
What is this Master Universe? Is it an island? I submit that the Master Universe is the third nucleus, a final nucleus and that it exists in relation to some outer cytoplasmic universe which is infinite - which has no end - it’s a triple nucleus.
I visualize this: At the beginning of all things we had two existential deities and a power base for operations. They trinitized an equal being – the Infinite Spirit – and produced Havona. At the final Master Universe Age, the age of the fourth outer space level, I can see harmony, a theme reappearing. Once again, we have two unique deities - experiential deities this time. Once again we have a power base for operation - the perfected Master Universe. I would suggest, and the papers would support this, that the Supreme Being will in some unimaginable way, trinitize God the Absolute and begin the invasion of the cosmos infinite. They will establish a beach head on the shores of infinity.
Now, God the Absolute, so trinitized is sub-infinite, because neither the Supreme Being, nor the Ultimate, nor the combination of the two is an infinite deity. But how vast are the resources on which they draw. And remember, they can mobilize all the experiential potential from the tennis ball, to the bedroom, the city block, the cubic city and the moon. This is vast. This is less than infinite, but nonetheless, tremendous. What they can mobilize will not represent an unworthy effort, and God the Absolute I think is going to appear and since he is sub-infinite he can grow, and I think this is the final adventure – the post ultimate adventure. And I think we will be there, because the papers instruct us that the last dimension of human personality is competent to attempt a sub-infinite penetration of the absolute level of reality. We can get up onto the third floor and we can grow and grow and grow. (Bill is referring to a graphic) I drew this wrong. This building happens to be open to the skies – there is no roof on the third floor. You can go and we are never hit the top; there is no roof on the third floor.
Again, as I consider this, the first universe age had no beginning in time. It had an end in time. The last universe age will be the mirror image of the first, it will have a beginning in time; it will have no end in time.
Let me ask you some questions. What kind of problems are you hitting in your reading? As we said last year, the whole objective of one of these seminars is to emerge with an ignorance that is more properly unified. We are never going to know very much about what these people are telling us, but we can get our ignorance more unified. And unified ignorance is so much more comforting than chaotic ignorance.
(Audience member: Actually, Bud gave some very good advice, he said to read the book as a novel. I have found that everything reverts back eventually to self and I have been quite cynical and having to overcome cynicism to get to this point. I didn’t realize what a cynic I was until I began reading this. I read rather slowly and I am afraid after I finish reading a paper, I go back and re-read it; Bud suggested I read it without going back and just keep going forward.)
Well a cynic is a disappointed idealist. A cynic is a person who has not only hoped too high, but the idealist expects to high. And if you don’t separate your hopes and your expectations, you fore-doom yourself to disappointment. And it says in the morontia life, if you make fewer personal plans pertaining to other personalities you will become father to fewer disappointments. That’s a very great statement. I put it in my own words and thinking by saying that I hope I am a realist who has ideals, because an idealist views life in serious distortion, so does the cynic. Both the cynic and idealist view life with one eye. And they see life flat. Both cynic and idealist have unified their hopes and expectations. The idealist has attempted to unify them on a high level, and the cynic has attempted to unify them on a very low level. I believe they should be separated. In other words, I think we should hope high and expect low. The problem rises partly because things are not just real or not real. Things are not just actual or potential. We encounter a very troublesome gray area which I would call the “zone of becoming.” And let’s take a good for instance – let’s take the “brotherhood of man.” Is this real – no, of course not. I read a headline. What was the earth-shattering headline we saw at lunch? “Somebody is not going to be somebody else’s champagne girl anymore. I don’t know any of the names but I understand champagne. Somebody is no longer swinging with somebody else who is not digging that somebody or something like that. At the same time can you say that the brotherhood of man is not a reality? No you can’t say that either. It’s in this confused area – its an ideal – its not yet a down to earth working idea yet. It will be an idea some day.
I have my hopes and my expectations better separated than they have ever been before. When I meet a new brother, I know he is a brother, and I hope that he feels this way, but I don’t expect him to be any more than a so and so who will try to do me in. And this happens every now and then. And when I meet my percentage of s.o.b.’s I am not shattered or shook up. I don’t expect anything more. I defend myself to the best of my ability; I won’t let him destroy me. I just chuckle and I say the human race has only been out of the jungle a few thousand years, civilization hasn’t got to him yet. Maybe it won’t. But there’s hope for his kids and his grandchildren.
I hope he’s a nice guy – I don’t expect him to be. As long as you hope and expect at the same level, you are in trouble, because you are either going to become a “pollyanna” going through life saying evil is not here, which makes you a Buddhist, or else you are going to get to be a hard boiled cynic, and say there ain’t nothing good. And I think life is a mix. I think both the idealist and the cynic have slipped into the ditch. One on one side of the road and one on the other and the crown road is difficult to drive off. It takes a lot of steady steering because it is slippery. I’ve been in both ditches at one time or another but I don’t like to stay in the ditch, I want to drive down the road. And to me, if you look at life with high hopes and very realistic expectations, how good could it be and how loused up might it get, I think you get not visual confusion, I think you get depth perception. This is the range finding principle. Our two eyes see things from a different angle of vision. The result is not confusion – the result is depth perception. I think you have greater insight into life. You get a better stereoscopic affect for evaluation.
Each year I live, I grow to expect less of my fellow man, and I think I love them a little more. I expect less of the human race today then at any time in my short life. And I think I have more affection for them than I have ever had before. My expectations are lower than they have ever been and my hopes are higher. Unless you broaden the base of your vision, you get greater and greater depth perception. Are you with me?
(Audience member: “As I told Bud, this makes me want to cry.” Bud’s response: “We have an infinite supply of Kleenex.”)
I’ll tell you what this book means to me, if you like, and this may be worth taping. I gave a talk for the Oklahoma Society and this was an open meeting, in a church, which they were then in the process of abandoning. It was advertised in the newspaper and lots of people showed up. I said, I’d like to talk about this book and what it means to me because this book has very deep religious significance, but in my personal experience I cannot separate religion and philosophy. The two are inseparable. I can’t philosophize without getting religious; and I can’t deal with religion without becoming involved in philosophy. I said this book helps be think straight.
There are two basic approaches which men have tried in civilization. One is exemplified in the medieval Christian attitude on the black death that hit Florence. The devout Florentine proudly said, “Let us descend together and pray saying, as he buried his family, the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”
The Hindu and the Buddhist also attempt a spiritistic approach to reality. They say, “it isn’t real.” The Buddhist says that this world is an illusion; it’s Maya. My favorite illustration is a real sweet story from Buddhism. There are three monks. They are out begging. They have their begging bowls and their saffron robes and of course what they are begging for is not meat but rice. And there is a hair in each begging bowl. Of course a hair in your soup bowl is unpleasant. The youngest monk is a neophyte and is very annoyed by the hair. The older monk, the in-betweener, is not annoyed by the hair because while he perceives the hair, he knows it’s not real. The oldest monk, who is on the threshold of nirvana, does not see the hair.
That’s one way of dealing with the material problems of life. You either say they are not real or you bow your head and trust in the Lord.
Now comes the renaissance and the revival of humanism and the Florentine begins to bestir himself, and he begins to say now look there is something we can do about this. Eventually we end up with sanitary practices. We begin to discover that this is a universe of law and order and if we can learn about these laws we do not have to be passive in relation to our environment. Humanism evolved: the non-religious, intellectual approach to life. Man’s reason, sheds off the shackles of limiting, inhibiting faith - and the blue book speaks of faith as something which limits in contrast to belief which liberates – and he says, “well let’s have at these problems.” He finds out about sewage disposal. He actually winds up with medicine. He eventually winds up with atomic energy. And he falls in love with this concept. He attempts to approach reality using mind instead of spirit, and believe me he is successful.
Our whole industrial civilization, this is right out of our problems with secularism at the end of the book, evolves by virtue of the fact that man’s logical thinking attacks material reality. But there is something wrong with this approach too, because in my life-time we have scientifically killed more people than have been killed in the Christian era. I have witnessed fear spread over all the world. For the first time, the people of the United States of America are thinking as though they lived in the Balkans. The enemy is only a few hours away. This is the way Bulgarians once thought about Serbians, and Montengrans thought about Romanians. And they were all afraid of Russia, and Austria and Hungary and Turkey. There is something wrong with this approach. I think there is something wrong with the spiritistic approach. I don’t like the idea of just bowing my head and saying the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh, blessed be the name of the Lord – if we can keep people alive. These papers help me out of this impasse. These papers teach me that total reality exists in three different levels. When I spell reality with a capital “r” this is the biggest word I know – it’s synonymous with infinity. This is everything that has been, is, or will be. These papers teach me way over in next to the last page of this book, that reality falls into three general categories: thing, meaning and value. I deem this to be one of the most helpful concepts in all the papers.
Write the word REALITY across the top of the page and then draw three columns under it. These headings could well cover the three divisions of energy which is matter, mind, and spirit. These papers instruct me that when I am working in the domain of things, the renaissance Florentine attitude is right. I should use reason. I don’t have a right to pray until I have exhausted human resources. They tell me when I am over in the domain of value, I should use faith. Things never touch values; matter never touches spirit; but both impinge on this fascinating intermediate zone and here in the domain of meanings I may attempt to use logic. If I am successful, if the human race is successful, then as a result of this, we evolved science and religion and philosophy. If we can think clearly, then we can respond to the great challenge that is portrayed in these papers.
Every religion portrays a challenge. In Medieval Christianity, the challenge very largely was the fear of hell, very little about the love of God. The Zoroastrian religion presents a challenge. It is terrifically morally stimulating. It says, choose sides. There is Ahura Mazda in the forces of life and there is Ahriman in the forces of darkness. And in the annuls of time, they contend as equal contenders, even though light triumphs in eternity.
Buddhism challenges you. Do you want to be separate from the over-soul of creation, with all this illusion, or by stripping yourself of these illusions can you find unity with the over-soul of creation.
The Urantia Book presents a challenge. The Urantia Book, at least three times if not more makes this statement: “On Paradise, energy and spirit are coordinate. In Havona they are unified. But in the evolutionary cosmos, energy-matter is dominant, save in personality, where spirit, through the mediation of mind, is striving for the mastery.
Let’s see what that means. Mind can whip matter. The material universe is a mind managed, mind dominated physical creation, starting with the Third Source and Center and running right down through the Force Organizers, Power Directors, and so on.
We can see that on the human level. The mind of man is slowly but certainly dominating this planet. When we set up a pipeline, what are we doing but building an artery in the planet. When we lay a telegraph line, what are we doing but laying a nerve on the planet. We are re-making this planet in our own image. Someday we will control weather if we don’t blow ourselves up first. We are slowly, but certainly, through our science, dominating our physical environment, but we are attempting to do this without spirit. This is mind unidentified with spirit. This is a secular, humanistic approach to the domain of things. The net result is that we breed fear. Why? Because we can’t stop worshipping. And when we stop worshipping God, we keep on worshipping, perhaps science. I have a friend who is deeply religious, and the name of his religion is science. You show him any mystery which science can’t explain, and he answers, credo, credence. I believe, we believe, that science will explain this in the future. This is faith. It’s a dislocation of faith.
When Neanderthals buried their dead they buried stone axes with them, because they new they were going someplace better than where they had been and it would be a happy hunting ground and this stone ax would come in handy. They believed.
Man is incurably worshipful. When he stops worshipping God he starts worshipping something temporal. And he probably ends up worshipping the state because the state is the greatest repository of power. Power worship. Power becomes the object of man’s worship. When man worships the state, if he starts out a conservative, he ends up a fascist. And if he starts our liberal, he ends up a communist. And as between a fascist and a communist I can make no choice. This is why we have loused things up almost beyond recognition in this generation. I don’t think, again to quote the blue book, you can run a free society without God any more than you could run the solar system without gravity.
This book tells me how to approach reality, sanely, and at the same time worshipfully. This book tells me that when I am working with the domain of things, I depend on mind to attack. And if we attack, we will win. At the same time this mind has got to become subordinate to spirit, otherwise, the power of science begets fear, not trust. We have more fear in the world today than we ever had in human history, with all of our prosperity. I sit in my office in Chicago and I look down Michigan Avenue, and I love this dirty city. I think it was 150 years that men have been building that city, and we now know it could be destroyed in 150 minutes. Just laid fat. This could happen before I get back home. You know what I mean? Next week, this week.
This book tells me how to be sane. This book challenges me, as it should challenge the whole human race. Can we put mind to work, whipping matter and at the same time aligning mind with spirit, so that this mind becomes socially fragrant, morally sound and ethically balanced. This we can do because we have the power of choice to subordinate mind with spirit. And when we do this, we are working with the grain of the universe, which is another way to say we are working in accordance with God’s will. This is the first thing I have ever encountered which makes sense to me on all levels: materially, intellectually, and spiritually. I have never found anything like it. Today, that’s what the book means to me in non-technical language. This is in the book. You’ll find it over here, the last page at the end of the book. I always wondered who wrote this book and it says on here - it’s page 2094, paragraph two, “there are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith – physical reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We are in the habit of designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value.” And of course those last three words are such wonderful words, because they are so small that I can understand them.
Would you like me to read to you the most awful thing in the book, about the problem of the present? Page 2082, paragraph 3. “Without God, without religion, scientific secularism can never coordinate its forces, harmonize its divergent and rivalrous interests, races and nationalisms. This secularistic human science society (which is us today, here and now) notwithstanding is unparalleled materialistic achievements, is slowly disintegrating. The chief cohesive force resisting this disintegration of antagonism is nationalism and nationalism is the chief barrier to world peace.”
I am troubled. The most vital thing in the world today is nationalism. And the most grievous threat to world peace is nationalism. We are in the proposition of Solomon in the temple, if we pull up the columns, we will pull the temple down, but we are going die in the debris. This is the horns of a real dilemma.
(Audience member: “In the Urmia lectures it says there will never be world peace until there is world sovereignty. That’s a long way off.”)
Let me ask this. What force in the world today is pushing scientific progress the strongest? It’s nationalism. It’s rocketry, and all that sort of thing.
(Audience member: “This is rather ominous – still more terrible destruction is yet to come. Inaudible comments.)
We’ve at least at one installment, and I hope we’ve had the full thing.
(Audience member: “That comment, that phrase of yours, the grain of the universe, sticks in my mind because it is illuminating. To me The Urantia Book makes that very plain, that the grain of the universe is evolutionary system. Not only biologic, but morally and spiritually and how we can go along with it, instead of fight it. One can do it much more intelligently when one understands what the grain of the universe is.)
This thing looks so simple but yet you stop to look at man’s approach to reality and he tends to go to either of the extreme columns. He doesn’t get them working together. This is not simple. This seems simple because it happens to be true. But a few times he has tried the middle column, that’s that most futile of all.
The Greek philosophers never got it off the ground. I mean, actually, how many people were inspired by Socrates and Plato. They were annoyed with Socrates I believe as subsequent events proved. The common people never heard Plato. What influence did Pythagoras have of a lasting nature? The Stoic and Epicurean schools didn’t live. Only religions lived. And yet religions have always attempted to destroy science and fight this because science quarrels properly with the superstitions of religion, and improperly with the truths of religion. (Inaudible comments from audience). That’s what makes democracy work too. It’s organization. A political spoilsman will see to it that the machinery works when the citizens are indifferent. Pardon me if I sound cynical.
(Audience member: “Could it be applied to religion, and I am thinking about the Hindu religion which in its idealistic talks it is very philosophic. But down among the people it is full of pagan gods and compromised with the most primitive ideas of the human race.”)
(Audience member: “Look at the people who believe in Hinduism. They are mostly illiterate. They can’t philosophize. Therefore, they have to go to pagan gods.”)
Religion has to work on all levels. It has to work on the level of truth and love. It’s got to work on mixed levels. It’s got to be institutionalized. It’s got to have symbols. There are people who require symbols. It’s got to have ritual. There are people who love ritual and are inspired by it. Then it’s got to get really alloyed with evolutionary religion. Listen, I’ve seen Roman Catholicism in the backwoods of Nicaragua where Spanish isn’t understood. They are dealing with Indian dialects and I would submit that Roman Catholicism in that grossly adulterated form is still better than just plain animism. Believe, they’ve got it under pretty good control now. They’ve got their old gods still.
(Audience members: “Bill, is that statement that Bud made about Hinduism accurate? Bud: “I am talking about the conglomerate of the citizen of India which has so many millions. Well they can philosophize but the majority can’t.”)
As between Kali worship at the bottom, and that’s not really at the bottom, and the concept of San Karsat Vedic Vedana at the top. The person worshipping Kali, the wife of Shiva the Destroyer, and trying to placate Kali and you’re involved with everything from sacrifice to temple prostitution, that’s a long way from the high caste Brahman contemplating the unity of his soul, the Atman with the oversoul of creation. And its very similar to a peasant worshipping an icon, not using it as a symbol. And yet the human spirit will run through this.
I think of James Bissett Pratt’s description of a peasant in Rangoon in a Buddhist temple. He was talking to this Buddhist monk who was quite literate. The peasant was praying to Buddha. And the monk said, “You see the trouble we have with our illiterates?” The monk knew the Buddha couldn’t hear, but the peasant woman knew that God could hear and her religion was a damn site better than the monk’s theology.
(Audience member: “Bill, if Moses didn’t have to lead a bunch of Bedouins through the desert, look at what the Jewish nation would be today; if he could have given them his real concept, instead of the watered down version.”)
But it wouldn’t sell. Ikhnaton wouldn’t compromise and he failed totally. You’ve got to water it down. Look, there were two concepts that plagued Jesus. He never succeeded in rising above either one of them because he had to work with first century brains reared in the Commonwealth of Israel. This was his material. Number one was: you are the Messiah. Number two was the Kingdom idea. He did his best to get away from both. Did you ever stop to think that Jesus never wanted to be called the Christ? He was not the messiah. The word Christ originally is the Greek word for messiah. Originally the anointed one. The anointed in the sense that David was. The messiah by most of the Jewish people was to be a wonderful king, a charging horseman, if you will, who was supposed to drive the Roman’s into the sea and let us get our country back. A very laudable, patriotic ambition. It was nationalism.
(Audience member: “A group god.”)
And yet Yahweh was also an international god, in another sense. There were two schools of thought. They fought it out during the Babylonian captivity and the nationalist won.
(Audience member: “If Moses could have stuck around for about 700 years, do you think he could have eventually elevated this?”)
Sure, the prophets did a pretty good job. When you start with what Moses had to settle for and then go as far as Second Isaiah, this is the darndest evolution of religion on the planet. To me, the divinity of the Old Testament has nothing to do with the inspiration of the words; it’s the progression of the prophets. This is unique in human history.
(Audience member: “But they never drop the One God, Lord of Israel.”)
Yes they do. No other group had a succession of prophets, building one on the other. Other groups have had wise teachers, and men who knew the truth, but this group had them on the installment plan. And when you conceive of the god of Second Isaiah, in Babylon, do you realize that Jesus practically quotes all of Second Isaiah in his teachings. This is an internationalist god. This is no god of any chosen people. And that’s why he was at loggerheads with Jewish Nationalism. The stuff he wrote was so blasted beautiful they couldn’t resist putting it in their scriptures. The shear beauty of his teachings is what comes to the surface.
(Audience member: “And that’s why they have so many contradictions.”)
People come now and let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, yet shall they be white as snow. This is a great god. And this was the culmination of the teachings of the Jewish prophets. Starting out with the god on Mount Sinai, that the spirit demon of Mount Sinai who gave him some true advice before he would take off for the desert: latch onto all the Egyptian possessions you can glomp.
But if you get critical of Moses, all you have to do is study Ikhnaton. There was an idealist. He wouldn’t compromise and he was the most powerful man on earth because he was the theological head, the temporal king of the best organized State on earth at that time. And he had behind him the full authority of the Egyptian army, navy and marine corps. And as long as he lived he could maintain monotheism. But since he wouldn’t compromise, he didn’t convert. He drove the priesthood underground and when he died they came topside and they chiseled his name off all the temples and went back to polytheism.
Moses would compromise. He made a sale.
(Audience member: “Compromise then is a necessity?”)
You don’t have a choice. Jesus compromised. Jesus compromised on two points. He said, all right I am the Christ, but not such a Christ as you are expecting. And he never did eradicate the idea of the kingdom of heaven. The idea was catchy. These people thought in those terms. You see, Jesus could not abrogate the free will of the Apostles. He couldn’t change them. They insisted on these beliefs. So he either had to fire them or else seek to modify them and at least go along with the form of their beliefs. Even Jesus couldn’t rise above the grooves in the thinking patterns of his first century AD contemporaries. He did his best to un-sell them but they wouldn’t buy. You see there were mixtures of truth and error. Peter’s confession is one of the most human things in this whole book. And it’s man at his best. When Jesus said, “But who do you say that I am?”, the extrovert Peter was the first to speak up and he said, “Master, you are the Messiah, the Christ, the son of the living God.” Peter’s confession starts in total error and ends in complete truth. This is the way people think. We think half wrong and half right. What are you going to do about it? Jesus didn’t debate the error, he accepted the truth. And he told Peter “Simon, no man has told you this, but this has come to you from the spirit of my Father, that indwells you and on this relationship of the spirit of God with the soul of man, I will build the kingdom of heaven.”
In time, the error will be purged and the truth will live. Because you see, truth-error works counter to the grain of the universe and little by little, century by century it gets culled out; whereas truth, since it works with the grain of the universe, little by little and century by century it is reinforced. And this has something to do, I think, with the Supreme Being, as well as with the Father. Because the finite grain of the universe is determined by the interaction of the Supreme Being on the one hand and the Paradise Trinity functioning on the finite level as the Trinity of Supremacy on the other. This is providence: the interaction of the Supreme Being and the Paradise Trinity. And this determines the grain of time and space, and this is even deeper than the will of God, because it is fundamental.
They go on to discuss in here, Inspired Trinity Spirits, which are fascinating beings; nobody knows much about them. Even beings of origin in the Paradise Trinity don’t know much about them. And this paper offers a wonderful illustration of the difference between curiosity and damn foolishness. The Perfector of Wisdom, I believe, who writes the paper on “The Sacred Spheres of the Father” says, “There are very few places forbidden to me, but one of them is Divinington, the home world of Thought Adjusters. I am forbidden to land there. I haven’t the least desire to go there. Quite likely all I would be able to perceive would be Personalized Adjusters and I perceive them elsewhere. There is nothing for me on Divinington.”
But in the section dealing with Inspired Trinity Spirits, the author says: “I will never stop my efforts to investigate and penetrate the mystery of these beings whose origin is so similar to my own.” He’s never been told not to do this. This is a good example of wisdom in relation to curiosity.
The question is, “What’s the difference between Sons of the Trinity and Trinitized Sons.” The Sons of the Trinity are beings of origin in the Trinity, such as the Supreme Finity Origin Beings, Trinitized Secrets of Supremacy, Eternals of Days, Ancients of Days, Recents, Perfections, Unions, Faithfuls, Divine Counselors, Universal Censors, Perfectors of Wisdom, Inspired Trinity Spirits, Havona natives and Paradise citizens.
A trinitized being may relate to the trinity or not, because the word trinitized is used in two senses in these papers: a being who is trinitized or a being who is trinity embraced. If two creatures trinitize a being, this is a creature-trinitized son and has nothing to do with the Trinity unless perhaps the trinity embraces that being, making let’s say a Creature Trinitized Son a Most High Assistant. Then, that being who started out as the personification of the idea jointly chosen by these two trinitizing finaliters, now comes to embrace not only the concept of the two finaliters but also the Trinity’s concept as concerns that one idea. So that such a High Son Assistant would become a near absolute authority on that one point, but only on that one point.
(Audience member: “Would the trinity, the person of trinity who is engaged in that trinitization, would they immediately be a part of the two that had the original concept?” Inaudible. What is the technique of trinitization?”)
The technique of trinitization is any technique whereby two beings produce another being equal to themselves and are modified as a consequence of this and can never produce another being equal to themselves. And this follows the pattern originally set by the Father and the Son, who trinitized the Infinite Spirit, a being equal themselves. And they could never produce a second Infinite Spirit – only one. And ever since that time, the Father and the Son have been in a peculiar way united as the Father-Son.
(Audience: “Does the trinitized idea go back to then the original Father-Son?”)
Yes. Two creatures can do this and they can only do this once, because even Deity could produce only one being equal to themselves. Now there is another type. The Trinity can embrace other beings and these trinity-embraced beings are referred to as Trinitized Sons. Let’s take Amadon. Amadon was rebellion tested. So was Van. The will ascend to Paradise in time, fuse with their Adjusters on the way, be mustered into the core of the finality, enjoy the full satisfaction of service as a finaliter for a time, and then the mandate will be issued, drafting on the core of the finality for seven hundred thousand rebellion tested finaliters. And these seven hundred thousand beings will be withdrawn from the core of the finality; will be embraced by the Paradise Trinity, and will emerge from that embrace as Mighty Messengers. And they are called Trinitized Sons or technically, Trinity Embraced Sons.
There is still another order of Trinitized Sons: Deity Trinitized Sons. They are listed in the paper on Trinitized Sons and we know nothing about them, whatsoever. We just know that there are such beings.
When the Universal Father and the Eternal Son independently conceive of an identical idea, they personify that idea as a Creator Son. This is not trinitization because the Creator Son is not the equal of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. They can produce any number of these Creator Sons. But when they produced a being equal to themselves they could never produce another one. There is only one Infinite Spirit. And yet in many ways, a Creator Son is very much like the Infinite Spirit, isn’t he. The same origin, except the Infinite Spirit is an absolute portrayal of the Father-Son, whereas a Creator Son is a sub-absolute portrayal of the Father-Son. Finite and absonite, but not absolute. Not absolute in the final sense, but absolute in a partial sense, because if by George, we can penetrate the absolute level it’s a darn shootin cinch that the Michaels can too.
(Audience member: “Is the Infinite Spirit acting as the Conjoint Actor, is he absolute?)
Yes, He’s infinite. There is no limit as to what he can do. He also has a compensatory function making up the inadequacies and deficiencies of experiential deity. In many ways where the Supreme Being can function, the Infinite Spirit may be in there pitching for him. He goes in as a pinch hitter for evolutionary deity, whenever such deity cannot function. He’s the versatile deity.
(Audience member: “Bill, the Urantia Book is the only book that has ever revealed the existence of the Eternal Son. Perhaps a lot of churches refer to Jesus as a part of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost?)
As near as I can figure it out, the Trinity of the Christian religion is the Universal Father, the Creator Son, and the Holy Spirit of the Creative Spirit.
(Audience member: “Julia and I were discussing this over the phone and we couldn’t come to a decision so we decided to ask you. As you may know there was a flying saucer convention here about a week ago. We were discussing whether the book says anything about contact with other planets at all. I thought they said no and Julia thought they said yes, but be thought we would ask you.”)
They don’t say anything however, they put such an embargo on the exchange of information between planets, that it would suggest to me they take an awfully dim view of such things.
(Audience member: ‘Well that was the feeling we had but we wondered if there was any other way, perhaps through Thought Adjusters…was there any possibility of communication?” Do you think possibly after we are settled in light and life?)
I think all bets are off then. Because you have achieved destiny and they take these barriers down when you achieve destiny. Here’s a pattern that seems to run through the whole creative plan. They want diversification and individuation and then later on they want to blend it. They take these seven superuniverses and they have the most iron curtain imaginable between each superuniverse. They want each one to develop its own unique flavor. And if you want to go from the capital of superuniverse number seven to either of the adjacent superuniverses, unless you are a peculiar guy like a solitary messenger, you can’t do it. You have to go into Havona and then come out again.
Now, they tell us when evolution has run its course, when all inhabited worlds have achieved experiential perfection and the Supreme Being takes over, they are going to take these barriers down. Then they are going to foster the co-mingling of these seven magnificent types of culture which have arisen in each superuniverse. This reminds me very much of the story of racial evolution on a planet. They plan seven races on a planet and they want each one of these seven races to achieve its level of culture and they produce a certain antipathy as between races which ensures that these races will draw apart and they hope that each one will develop its culture. And when this culture has been developed to a certain point, then through the bestowal of Adams blood, they try to blend these races. This to me is the same pattern taking place. I suspect the same thing has to do with patterns.
I can’t think of any reason why two worlds settled in light and life shouldn’t know all about each other. But let’s suppose that we go space adventuring and we wind up on a planet. Odds are it’s either way ahead of us or way behind. Now if it’s way ahead of us, are we entitled to all that unearned information? If it’s way behind us, are we going to be wise enough not to clobber them with a lot of unearned information?
(Audience member: “If they were way ahead of us the first power to end up there would try to get all the information for their own use and if they were behind us, it would be another Africa. They would start colonizing.”)
That’s my point.
(Audience Member: “Did I hear you say that these differences in culture arise from the fact that we are all in an imperfect world. Do you think that is true rather than in the basic pattern of personality? For instance, certainly there was a pattern for the seven races?)
Surely, the Life Carriers designed it. Each personality is unique but I am thinking of the composite total of a culture, a society, a civilization. It’s human will operating imperfectly producing irregularities from which the evil is finally abstracted and still the residual pattern of a de-evilized imperfecton would give a peculiar flavor to the culture of a planet.
(Audience member: “Even in the seven superuniverses?)
Well in the seventh superuniverse you have a pattern set. Each superuniverse is dominated by just one of the Seven Master Spirits and I would compare it to the color spectrum. Red, orange, yellow, blue, green, and violet. Each super universe has got the same foot candles of light but it’s in a different hue. That saturates the superuniverse. This determines a basic differentiation because each superuniverse is dominated by this Master Spirit and each Creative Spirit, in each local universe in that superuniverse takes on that same hue when they start to create personalities. Prior to the appearance of Gabriel in Nebadon, the Creative Spirit was like the Infinite Spirit. But after the creation of Gabriel the Creative Spirit of Nebadon was like Master Spirit Seven. And she determines the superuniverse inheritance factor in our local universe.
You have 100,000 variations of inheritance in Orvonton, our superuniverse, because each Michael son is different from any other Michael son. And he sets the local universe variety of inheritance in that superuniverse.
And then you start in with all of the other personalities which impart a peculiar flavor to that local universe partly by the design of the creating beings, partly by their own decision until you wind up with critters like us, who don’t have to do anything. They are seeking for the stimulus of change. In Havona you see it by the fiat of creation. Out here it is being done by apparent change. And yet the book instructs me that blind and unforeseen accidents do not happen in the cosmos. It’s a very mysterious statement, but it makes sense to me. It feels right to me but I can’t explain it.
(Audience member: “It goes back to an earlier chapter – could you tell me the difference between the absonite and the ultimate – God the Absonite and God the Ultimate? Absonite is that paragraph.” I know they are not the same but…”)
They are related. The word absonite is to God the Ultimate as the word finite is to God the Supreme. The absonite is a stage of action on which the Ultimate is eventuated. The finite level is a stage of action on which the Supreme Being is evolving. One refers to a level, the other refers to a person. (“Can you repeat that?”) Go back to our firehouse which you can still dimly see – to the second floor of the firehouse I would give the name absonite. And in this sense I would use it as synonymous with transcendental. This is the level on which the God the Ultimate is eventuated, by experiential techniques.
The word ultimate also applies to the values on that level. The word ultimate also applies to the function of the paradise trinity on that level - The Trinity of Ultimacy. The ultimate also applies to the function of the first experiential trinity – denoted the Trinity Ultimate, made up of the Supreme, the Supreme Creators, and the Architects of the Master Universe. Those are the uses of the word ultimate. But “ultimate” all by itself capitalized would mean God the Ultimate. Ultimate uncapitalized would refer to the level of values on that second floor, as the word supreme, capitalized or uncapitalized would similarly refer to deity or to a level of quality of the first floor of the finite level. Finite is to supreme, roughly as absonite is to ultimate.
On page 3 they talked about levels of divinity. They talk about absolute perfection, relative perfection, and imperfection. Now don’t make this one go on all fours, but roughly, I would think of the absonite level as being relatively perfect. Now I don’t think that is what this is intended to illustrate. That would come nearer fitting this pattern than any other concept presented here. Again, when they talk about Havona, Havona is not absolute, it is not, not absolute. Havona is not really finite, but it is not, not finite. The papers say Havona is nearer the absonite than any other concept revealed to us. It’s not really absonite. But then again, the Univitatia exist in a level mid way between matter and spirit, but they are not morontia.
(Audience member: “Bill, would you say this: man would be finite, God would be infinite, power controllers and power centers would be absonite?”)
No. The Universe Power Directors are finite, but the Force Organizers are transcendental, absonite beings.
(Audience Member: “Then man is finite, God is infinite, and Force Organizers are absonite?”)
And the Architects of the Master Universe are absonite. A better illustration would be to say a Havona native is finite. Now you are dealing with a perfect being. Man is not only finite, he’s a pretty lousy finite. He’s an imperfect finite.
(Audience Member: “But when the Father wanted to reveal himself to finite beings he made provision for a finite God, the Supreme Being. In other words, just because you are finite isn’t a stigma, because you have everything that an absonite has, except…”)
You have absonite potential; you have the plumbing roughed in.
(Audience Member: “But you still have no less opportunity as a finite to do everything an absonite can do, except you are doing it in a finite sphere. Rephrased, the distances between the floor and the ceiling of each level of the firehouse are equal and any finite can go from the floor to the ceiling as well as any absonite can go from the floor to the ceiling.”)
I’ll buy that. The distances are equal but they are proportional. I would say that the distance between the floor and ceiling of the first floor is about two inches. The distances between the floor and ceiling on the second floor is in the order of sixteen hundred miles. And there is no roof on the third floor, it’s an infinite system.
(Audience Member: “But quantitatively its been equated. Qualitatively it can’t be equated.”)
Qualitatively, yes. The first and second floor are comparable, but all bets are off on the third floor.
Audience comments inaudible.
They may attempt to reach the ceiling on the third floor but there isn’t any. Which means you never get shut in.
(Audience Member: “I don’t understand why the Havona natives are like mortal man, how they can compare the finite…”)
They are finite in the perfect sense of the word. Why shouldn’t there be finites on Havona. The pattern creatures for human beings are found on the outer circuits of Havona, something of everything that is going to occur in the Master Universe.
(Audience Member: “Bill, there are finites on Paradise – finaliters are really finites. They had beginnings. They are time and space conscious…”)
I don’t know the status of the Paradise citizens, the book tells us nothing. I think a primary supernaphim is a finite being. And they are born on Paradise. They are Paradise angels.
Now look, let’s go back to the concept of maximums. I am quoting the book. “This universe at the present time contains primary, finite maximums. Now let’s analyze that. The word primary suggests they are something other than primary, namely secondary, which are dissimilar. These beings are finite. These beings are also maximum. This means in terms of the finite level, they can’t do much growing. They’ve had it. They are full-blown beings. They are at the finite ceiling. When a finaliter -and let’s forget about the seventh stage of spirit - let’s say the sixth stage is this limit, which indeed it is in the present universe age – he is a finite maximum. He’s gone as far as he can go in status. He’s not a primary finite maximum. He’s a secondary finite maximum, as the book describes it. He has become the peer, the coordinate of a Havona native. Not by origin, but by achievement. When you want to compare humans and Havonars, you must compare, not humans with Havonars, you must compare finaliters with Havonars. Now you are comparing two maximums. We are incomplete secondary finites. We are just beginning.
(Audience Member: “When we’re finaliters, where are we in relationship to the floor and ceiling?”)
We’re getting up near the ceiling.
(Audience Member: “Well when do we start to absonite?”)
Not until the next universe age, except that we may be fumbling with it in a second universe age. But we are not going to smash through the floor. We may be listening to the stereo on the second floor – but we are still on the first floor.
(Audience Member: “There is a chain link fence.”)
(Audience Member: “The technique of finding God on the absonite level which we are told we are trying to do, is therefore not evolutionary.”)
It is not evolutionary in the sense of involving the growth of the Supreme. I think it is evolutionary in the sense of being involved in the growth of the Ultimate. It is super-finite evolutionary. But it is still evolutionary because it is still something which is taking place in time and with which we are participants, and concerning which we can function as conscious intelligent, cooperating partners with God. Now no Havona native went into partnership with the Trinity in effecting his own origin. He simply was – that’s all – he is. But we will not stop being partners with God in the next universe age. And in that sense, evolution is going right on. It’s going to be super-finite evolution. It’s going to relate to the growth of the ultimate as finite evolution now relates to the growth of the Supreme.
(Audience Member: “But the Ultimate is an experiential deity.”)
He is, yes, just as much as the Supreme. And someday he will achieve completion of growth because he is sub-infinite. Hence that goal is attainable in time.
You know, I wonder how right we are. You guys ask me questions and I fire answers back to you, and I often think we may have some observers here and I often wonder if they are chuckling, and are they chuckling ruefully. I tell you I mean this when I say is all I can share with you is a reasonably well-unified ignorance. I’ve got my ignorance better unified than yours, so I’ll share it with you.
(Audience Member: “They’re probably saying, wait till we get this guy upstairs and straighten him out.”)
They may be saying, talk about Peter’s perversion of Jesus’ gospel, but look at what this guy is doing with the blue book. Every now and then I get a real chilly feeling about that.
(Audience Member: “On the second floor of the firehouse the absoniter, is he in and around the transcendentalers?”)
Don, when you stop to consider the problems of the vastness of outer space, he’s got to be there. Now whether he personally transcends time and space or not, he’s got to be able to command the services of people who do. And the finaliters have these services. To each finaliter company of 1000, there are attached 1000 gravity messengers. And they just are not baffled by immense distances because they move instantaneously. So whether or not we can do it, we have assistants who can.
(Audience Member: “Do you relate eventually to evolution?”)
No. Here, in this sense, the growth of the Supreme is by a technique of experiential evolution. The growth of the Ultimate is by a technique of experiential eventuation. The growth of the Godly absolute is by a technique of experiential existentials. The word experiential runs through all three levels. But as you go from the first to the second level, you substitute eventuation and then you get into experiential existentials on the third level.
(Audience Member: “We’re getting into imaginary numbers again. They are mysteries until we get there.”)
We don’t have big enough words in Bantu. I am sure our concepts are getting very shaky as we leave the finite level. We are playing with some awfully big things. Going out to the end of space and beyond and assume that space is catching up to us this morning. That takes a lot of nerve to speculate along those lines. And we know we are distorting the devil out of the concept with speculating, but let’s do it. The authors of these papers speculate. They say we don’t know but we think.
(Audience Member: “Will you please explain eventuation?”)
Yes, it’s very simple. It’s a super-finite thing. God the Father functions in three ways, below the third floor. This is his sub-absolute function. He functions in a pre-personal sense and when he functions in that way to produce something, he fragments, and what you get is an Adjuster. He also functions personally. And when he functions personally, he creates, as when he collaborates in the production of a Creator Son. He also functions super-personally. And when he functions super-personally, he eventuates something. Eventuation does not involve creation, in the same sense that fragmentation is not an act of creation. When he fragments, I think of God the Father as a big newspaper and he tears off a piece of this newspaper, that’s a Thought Adjuster, or some other Father fragment, like a Gravity Messenger.
When he creates, this of course is the most comprehensible thing. Now what he does when he eventuates, I can’t visualize, except I can feel the difference between fragmentation and creation, so I now can set up a third member of the series and say that eventuation is as much different from creation as creation is different from fragmentation. Now I get a little feeling up here.
The Architects of the Master Universe never were created, neither are they creators. They are spoken of as these uncreated non-creators; they are eventuators. And what the authors of the papers have done - and they so state - they have simply said, to avoid introducing an arbitrary term, we have taken an English term and attached special meanings to it. They could just as well say, “God blooped them.” Then we would have to find out what the word ‘blooped” meant.
As you get near the ceiling of the first floor, you are getting up to the place where time conjoins transcended time. In just one reference, they call the Supreme Being the evidence of the projected incomplete. It think that term was put in here to stimulate our thinking. Here’s what it means to me: Something which has imminence is the opposite of something which has transcendence, it is a presence rather than an above-ness - it’s God in the Universe.
Emerson presented transcendentalism as a contrast to “imminencism”, if I can coin such a word - the projected incomplete. The Supreme Being is the incomplete. Someday he will enjoy an imminence in the Grand Universe. I think in certain ways, he can project this imminence. Let’s say, shine a colored slide on the ceiling of the first floor, where time conjoins transcended time. Now that juncture there might have reflective properties, just like a literal ceiling. Then he can reflect back onto the first floor level, a part of the image of what he is to be, for the future. We are monkeying with our sequence concept here and that’s dangerous. At any rate, he isn’t here. And if he isn’t here, how in the devil do you explain the presence of the Unqualified Supervisors of the Supreme, who represent him in universes settled in Light and Life. He shouldn’t be able to do this until he is a completed being. This is a sneak preview of the next Universe Age.
In a certain sense I think the Ultimate is functional. We know he is in Havona, along with the Supreme Being. We discover that in Paper 13 (or 14).
The Second Experiential Trinity is functional in a limited sense because the incomplete ultimate is functional in the limited sense. The incomplete Supreme is definitely functional, so you have a partial function of the First Experiential Trinity. If you have a partial function of the First Experiential Trinity, do you also have a partial function, a lesser function, a more attenuated function of the second experiential Trinity? And if you do, then in some sense the unrevealed consummator of universe destiny is now functional. I don’t know. And then again remember what they tell us in universe levels of reality. This whole story is told from the time perspective. The eternity perspective, the Paradise viewpoint would look at this entirely differently, because the thing which separates the Supreme Being from full function is time. And on Paradise, time is not real. And too much thinking in this direction is going to leave you dizzy.
I would say the simplest proof I could offer is the unimpeachable evidence that human beings can make jackasses out of themselves from time to time and at various times.
(Audience: Inaudible…. “I mean that seriously, because Billy has been having that difficulty. We have tried to give her that sequence because we have freewill.” More inaudible chatter.)
I don’t think you prove that, I think you feel it; you reason it out.
(Audience Member: “Well as I understand it, we do have freewill, but only within the limits of our leash.”)
But where God is concerned, it is a very long leash – in fact it is unlimited.
(Audience Member: “This I will accept.”)
Now practically speaking, in every day life, I look at freewill this way. I think in many ways I am like a railroad train traveling down a track. Much of the way I don’t have a great deal in the way of choice to make. I am on the mainline – I hope. But now and then I pass over switches. And by gosh, every time I go over a switch, I can throw that switch either way. I hit a divergence in the path, and there I can make a choice. I can choose either fork. I can even, if I want to operate determinedly, I build a road or even make a fork within limits. But mostly we don’t do that. I think mostly, we make choices as between alternative situations which convolute in more or less the natural course of events. But these are true choices. You can say fine, you’ll choose in accordance with your past background. I will cordially agree with you. But I will insist that you might not. I will insist that you are not necessarily going to do that. The statistical probability is that you will. There are many worlds that were made to be inhabited by creatures who could know God, receive his affection and love him in return. This is not an idle experiment; this is a purposeful adventure. And in paragraph three, they point out what the goal of these creatures is, and then they confront us with the major theme of this book: God’s challenge to mortal man – be you perfect, even as I am perfect. They point out that we are not left in ignorance as to this challenge. The message is brought home to us.
In the next paragraph they point out that this should be real exciting to us. This should give us goose pimples like golf balls. This should get us real jumpy. This is it for us. And then they qualify it. They say now what are we talking about. Does this mean you are going to be equal to God? No. But within your limitations you can become God-like. You can become as a creature perfect within the limitations of a creature just as he is perfect without limitation. Then they repeat again, this is what God means when he challenges you. Come on, try to be perfect like I am perfect.
“Mind is your ship, the Adjuster is your pilot, the human will is captain. The master of the mortal vessel should have the wisdom to trust the divine pilot to guide the ascending souls into the morontia harbors of eternal survival. Only by selfishness, slothfulness, and sinfulness, can the will of man reject the guidance of such a loving pilot and eventually wreck the mortal career upon the evil shoals of rejected mercy and on the rocks of embraced sin. With your consent, the faithful pilot will safely carry you across the barriers of time and the handicaps of space to the very source of the divine mind and on beyond, even to the Paradise Father of Adjusters.”