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The Father is the Personality of the First Source and Center.

Any of us can sense the personality of any of us, because we are persons.

But this does not mean that we necessarily comprehend the physiology of that person, the anatomy of that person, the endocrinology of that person, the cortex of that person, or any other aspect of that person, except his contactable personality, and that which goes with it.

The term First Source and Center is a larger term than Universal Father, but not a more meaningful term to human beings. The meaning is inversely proportional to the size of the concept. It is the smallest concept of the First Source and Center that has meaning to us. The Deity of the First Source and Center is a larger concept than the word God, because the word God implies personality, and Deity may be larger than personality.

The Deity of the First Source and Center would encompass his prepersonal and superpersonal functions. The word God implies only his personal functions and relationships. And the word Father is the smallest word of all. The word Father takes that aspect of God which is related to us and names it. The smallest idea of God is most meaningful because God is much too big for us.

Therefore, as we narrow our concept, our feeling for meaning increases, and the value of the concept goes up enormously to us. We worship the Father. We do not worship the First Source and Center as such, except as we by implication worship him in our worship of the Father.

Jesus at no time attempted to portray any aspect of God larger than the Father aspect. That was a job in itself.

Audience: (Can't hear comment).

Yes, he never attempted to portray the justice of the Trinity. Just the love of the Father. He stopped the story of the prodigal son before justice enters the picture. He merely portrayed a Father's joy.

"When we speak of the Father, we mean God as he is understandable by his creatures both high and low, but there is much more of Deity which is not comprehensible to universe creatures. God, your Father and my Father, is that phase of the Infinite which we perceive in our personalities as an actual experiential reality, but the I AM ever remains as our hypothesis of all that we feel is unknowable of the First Source and Center. And even that hypothesis probably falls far short of the unfathomed infinity of original reality."

This is a Melchizedek.

"The universe of universes, with its innumerable host of inhabiting personalities, is a vast and complex organism, but the First Source and Center is infinitely more complex than the universes and personalities which have become real in response to his willful mandates. When you stand in awe of the magnitude of the master universe, pause to consider that even this inconceivable creation can be no more than a partial revelation of the Infinite."

"Infinity is indeed remote from the experience level of mortal comprehension, but even in this age on Urantia your concepts of infinity are growing--"

Audience: I hope so!

"And they will continue to grow throughout your endless careers stretching onward into future eternity. Unqualified infinity is meaningless to the finite creature, but infinity is capable of self-limitation and is susceptible of reality expression to all levels of universe existences."

That's the pole running through all levels of the firehouse.

"And the face which the Infinite turns toward all universe personalities is the face of a Father, the Universal Father of love."

We're tackling a concept here which is tougher than the Unqualified Absolute. The Unqualified Absolute is a comforting concept--I can't know anything about it. But this is a much more intriguing concept. I can know much about this even now. I can even feel something of it.

Let's go back to the preceding page. We're backing into this concept. The bottom of the page.

"The I AM is the Infinite; the I AM is also infinity." That's the Infinite. This is infinity.

Audience: Please repeat that.

The yolk is Infinite. The white is infinity.

Audience: The Infinite, yes.

There's an implication of the personal and the not personal there. Infinity is not a person, but the Infinite, yes.

"From the sequential, time viewpoint, all reality has its origin in the infinite I AM, whose solitary existence in past infinite eternity must be a finite creature's premier philosophic postulate."

They validated our first frame.

"The concept of the I AM connotes unqualified infinity, the undifferentiated reality of all that could ever be in all of an infinite eternity."

"As an existential concept the I AM is neither deified nor undeified, neither actual nor potential, neither personal nor impersonal, neither static nor dynamic. No qualification can be applied to the Infinite except to state that the I AM is. The philosophic postulate of the I AM is one universe concept which is somewhat more difficult of comprehension than that of the Unqualified Absolute."

Audience: Laughter. "To the finite mind there simply must be a beginning, and though there never was a real beginning to reality, still there are certain source relationships which reality manifests to infinity. The pre-reality, primordial, eternity situation may be thought of something like this:"

They're now going to describe our first frame up here.

"At some infinitely distant, hypothetical, past-eternity moment,"--hypothetical meaning we've gone through the looking-glass-- at this moment, "the I AM may be conceived as both thing and no thing, as both cause and effect, as both volition and response. At this hypothetical eternity moment there is no differentiation throughout all infinity. Infinity is filled by the Infinite; the Infinite encompasses infinity. This is the hypothetical static moment of eternity;"--that's the first level of total Deity function, static--"actuals are still contained within their potentials, and potentials have not yet appeared within the infinity of the I AM."

And now, they make that vital statement. We do not have a custard. We have a fried egg:

"But even in this conjectured situation we must assume the existence of the possibility of self-will."

A custard is undifferentiated. A fried egg is clearly differentiated. These papers do not validate a monad. The word monad would be a custard. They validate at best a unified duality.

"In considering"--I'm jumping over our introduction--"the genesis of reality, ever bear in mind that all absolute reality is from eternity and is without beginning of existence." Our last frame. "By absolute reality we refer to the three existential persons of Deity, the Isle of Paradise, and the three Absolutes. These seven realities are co-ordinately eternal, notwithstanding that we resort to time-space language in presenting their sequential origins to human beings."

"In following the chronological portrayal of the origins of reality, there must be a postulated theoretical moment of `first' volitional expression and `first' repercussional reaction within the I AM."

We're now going from the first to the second frame.

"In our attempts to portray the genesis and generation of reality, this stage may be conceived as the self-differentiation of The Infinite One" (the yolk) "from The Infinitude" (the white), "but the postulation of this dual relationship must always be expanded to a triune conception by the recognition of the eternal continuum of The Infinity, the I AM."

There are two ways you can look at that. You can either say the first frame is still existent, or the infinity is now functional as the Universal Absolute.

"This self-metamorphosis of the I AM culminates in the multiple differentiation of deified reality and of undeified reality,"--that's the first one--"of potential and actual reality,"--that's something yet again; that's when he produces the Son, Spirit, and Paradise--"and of certain other realities that can hardly be so classified. These differentiations of the theoretical monistic I AM are eternally integrated by simultaneous relationships arising within the same I AM--the prepotential, preactual, prepersonal, monothetic prereality which, though infinite, is revealed as absolute in the presence of the First Source and Center and as personality in the limitless love of the Universal Father."

I'm so glad they parachute out of that paragraph and hit the ground in the last phrases.

"By these internal metamorphoses the I AM is establishing the basis for a sevenfold self-relationship. The philosophic (time) concept of the solitary I AM and the transitional (time) concept of the I AM as triune"--triune: the Infinite One, the Infinitude, the Infinity--"can now be enlarged to encompass the I AM as sevenfold. This sevenfold--or seven phase--nature may be best suggested in relation to the Seven Absolutes of Infinity:" They're presenting the I AM here as first one, on one level, then on the next level, as three faceted, and now on the third level, as seven faceted. Let me read you in sequence what they call the seven facets of the I AM:

"I AM father of the Eternal Son."

"I AM cause of eternal Paradise."

"I AM one with the Eternal Son." The relationship with the Conjoint Actor.

"I AM self-associative." Relationship to the Universal Absolute.

"I AM self-qualified." Relationship to the Deity Absolute.

"I AM static-reactive." Relationship to the Unqualified Absolute.

"I AM as I AM." Relationship to self.

Let's read these.

"I AM father of the Eternal Son. This is the primal personality relationship of actualities. The absolute personality of the Son makes absolute the fact of God's fatherhood and establishes the potential sonship of all personalities. This relationship establishes the personality of the Infinite and consummates its spiritual revelation in the personality of the Original Son. This phase of the I AM is partially experiencible on spiritual levels even by mortals who, while yet in the flesh, may worship our Father."

"I AM cause of eternal Paradise. This is the primal impersonal relationship of actualities, the original nonspiritual association. The Universal Father is God-as-love; the Universal Controller is God-as-pattern. This relationship establishes the potential of form--configuration--and determines the master pattern of impersonal and nonspiritual relationship--the master pattern from which all copies are made."

Every space level faithfully portrays the outlines of the pattern of Paradise. It is an ellipse. Even our planet circles its sun in an ellipse. The Master Physical Controllers and the Universe Power Directors copy the Paradise pattern.

Audience: (Can't understand tape) does, too.

"I AM one with the Eternal Son. This union of the Father and the Son (in the presence of Paradise) initiates the creative cycle, which is consummated in the appearance of conjoint personality and the eternal universe. From the finite mortal's viewpoint, reality has its true beginnings with the eternity appearance of the Havona creation. This creative act of Deity is by and through the god of Action, who is in essence the unity of the Father-Son manifested on and to all levels of the actual.

Therefore is divine creativity unfailingly characterized by unity, and this unity is the outward reflection of the absolute oneness of the duality of the Father-Son and of the Trinity of the Father-Son-Spirit."

"I AM self-associative. This is the primordial association of the statics and potentials of reality. In this relationship, all qualifieds and unqualifieds are compensated. This phase of the I AM is best understood as the Universal Absolute--the unifier of the Deity and the Unqualified Absolutes."

"I AM self-qualified. This is the infinity bench mark"--I love that figure of speech--"This is the infinity bench mark bearing eternal witness to the volitional self-limitation of the I AM by virtue of which there was achieved threefold self-expression and self-revelation. This phase of the I AM is usually understood as the Deity Absolute."

This threefold self-expression and self-revelation is Paradise, the Son, and the Spirit.

"6. I AM static-reactive. This is the endless matrix, the possibility for all future cosmic," or universe, "expansion. This phase of the I AM is perhaps best conceived as the supergravity presence of the Unqualified Absolute." Or space potency.

"I AM as I AM. This is the stasis or self-relationship of Infinity, the eternal fact of infinity-reality and the universal truth of reality-infinity. In so far as this relationship is discernible as personality, it is revealed to the universes in the divine Father of all personality--even of absolute personality. In so far as this relationship is impersonally expressible, it is contacted by the universe as the absolute coherence of pure energy and of pure spirit in the presence of the Universal Father. In so far as this relationship is conceivable as an absolute, it is revealed in the primacy of the First Source and Center; in him we all live and move and have our being, from the creatures of space to the citizens of Paradise; and this is just as true of the master universe as of the infinitesimal ultimaton, just as true of what is to be as of that which is and of what has been."

And now, I think maybe this sentence means a little more. "Your experiential worshipful concept of the Universal Father must always be less than your philosophic postulate of the infinity of the First Source and Center, the I AM."

(Break in tape).

Turn to page 109. Betty's asked a question about the language I used in discussing the origin of the Eternal Son. In the section, "Deity Personalization:" "By the technique of trinitization the Father divests himself of that unqualified spirit personality which is the Son, but in so doing he constitutes himself the Father of this very Son and thereby possesses himself of unlimited capacity to become the divine Father of all subsequently created, eventuated, or other personalized types of intelligent will creatures. As the absolute and unqualified personality the Father can function only as and with the Son,"--now here's that unification that comes about in trinitization. Having given this away the Father never again can be this except in conjunction with the Son-- "but as a personal Father he continues to bestow personality upon the diverse hosts of the differing levels of intelligent will creatures--" "After the Father has bestowed upon the personality of his Son the fullness of himself, and when this act of self-bestowal is complete and perfect, of the infinite power and nature which are thus existent in the Father-Son union, the eternal partners conjointly bestow those qualities and attributes which constitute still another being like themselves; and this conjoint personality, the Infinite Spirit, completes the existential personalization of Deity."

"The Son is indispensable to the fatherhood of God. The Spirit is indispensable to the fraternity of the Second and Third Persons. Three persons are a minimum social group, but this is least of all the many reasons for believing in the inevitability of the Conjoint Actor."

"The First Source and Center is the infinite father-personality, the unlimited source personality. The External Son is the unqualified personality-absolute, that divine being who stands throughout all time and eternity as the perfect revelation of the personal nature of God."

Not a revelation of the total nature of God. But the final revelation of the personal nature of the First Source and Center.

"The Infinite Spirit is the conjoint personality, the unique personal consequence of the everlasting Father-Son union."

They say Father personality, personality Absolute, Conjoint personality.

"The personality of the First Source and Center is the personality of infinity minus the absolute personality of the Eternal Son. The personality of the Third Source and Center is the superadditive consequence of the union of the liberated Father-personality and the absolute Son-personality."

So, in our fourth frame, where we say the Father and the Son, the "and" personalizes as the Conjoint Actor. "The Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit are unique persons; none is a duplicate; each is original; all are united."

It's a beautiful sentence.

Let's sort of take inventory now. At this point, we have followed the--we've started with a philosophic concept of a solitary I AM. We looked at a transitional concept of the I AM as triune. We've looked at a completed concept of the I AM as sevenfold. I would like to symbolize this concept of the I AM as sevenfold by asking you to visualize a cube. This cube is a good symbol for the seven facets of the I AM, six facets of which point outward, and one points inward. One facet of our six faceted cube is an internal facet. Now, I want you to visualize six additional things, if you choose. Make them spheres, each one standing at right angles to one facet of this cube. We have only six spheres, because our seventh sphere is inside the cube. Do you follow me? The first of these is the internal sphere.

We're discussing now the seven Absolutes of infinity. It simply says flatly, "The seven Absolutes are the premise of reality."

If you try to think back of these seven Absolutes, you are dealing with a pre-reality situation. You're on the wrong side of the looking-glass. In talking about the First Source and Center, they call him, "First Person of Deity and primal nondeity pattern."

He's the First Person of Deity because he expressed himself personally in the Second Person of Deity. He is the primal non-Deity pattern because he expressed that pattern in the Isle of Paradise.

"Universal Father, creator, controller, and upholder; universal love, eternal spirit, and infinite energy; potential of all potentials and source of all actuals; stability of all statics and dynamism of all change; source of pattern and Father of persons. Collectively, all seven Absolutes equivalate to infinity, but the Universal Father himself actually is infinite."

Then the Second Source and Center. You notice there is a parallel in sentence construction in these paragraphs.

"Second Person of Deity, the Eternal and Original Son; the absolute personality realities of the I AM and the basis for the realization-revelation of `I AM personality.' No personality can hope to attain the Universal Father except through his Eternal Son; neither can personality attain to spirit levels of existence apart from the action and aid of this absolute pattern for all personalities. In the Second Source and Center spirit is unqualified while personality is absolute."

The Paradise Source and Center. Second nondeity pattern,"--the Father is the first non-deity pattern--"the eternal Isle of Paradise; the basis for the realization-revelation of "I AM force."

Let's go back and trace that. "I AM personality," it says in connection with the Son.

"I AM force," it says in connection with Paradise.

". . . and the foundation for the establishment of gravity control throughout the universes. Regarding all actualized, nonspiritual, impersonal, and nonvolitional reality, Paradise is the absolute of patterns. Just as spirit energy is related to the Universal Father through the absolute personality of the Mother-Son, so is all cosmic energy grasped in the gravity control of the First Source and Center through the absolute pattern of the Paradise Isle. Paradise is not in space; space exists relative to Paradise, and the chronicity of motion is determined through Paradise relationship."

"The eternal Isle is absolutely at rest; all other organized and organizing energy is in eternal motion; in all space, only the presence of the Unqualified Absolute is quiescent, and the Unqualified is co-ordinate with Paradise. Paradise exists at the focus of space, the Unqualified pervades it, and all relative existence has its being within this domain."

"The Third Source and Center. Third Person of Deity, the Conjoint Actor; infinite integrator of Paradise cosmic energies with the spirit energies of the Eternal Son; perfect co-ordinator of the motives of will and the mechanics of force; unifier of all actual and actualizing reality. Through the ministrations of his manifold children the Infinite Spirit reveals the mercy of the Eternal Son while at the same time functioning as the infinite manipulator, forever weaving the pattern of Paradise into the energies of space. This selfsame Conjoint Actor, this God of Action, is the perfect expression of the limitless plans and purposes of the Father-Son while functioning himself as the source of mind and the bestower of intellect upon the creatures of a far-flung cosmos."

"The Deity Absolute. The causational, potentially personal possibilities of universal reality, the totality of all Deity potential. The Deity Absolute is the purposive qualifier of the unqualified, absolute, and nondeity realities. The Deity Absolute is the qualifier of the absolute and the absolutizer of the qualified--the destiny inceptor."

The Consummator of Universe Destiny must be related to the Deity Absolute. This is the closest I know of in the blue book where they use language that even sounds like the Consummator of Universe Destiny. An "inceptor" is a "bringer to pass." This Deity Absolute qualifies the unqualified and absolutizes the relative, or the qualified.

"6. The Unqualified Absolute. Static, reactive, and abeyant; the unrevealed cosmic infinity of the I AM."

Cosmic, here, I think, is rather carefully used as the opposite of spirit. It's physical universe reality.

". . . totality of nondeified reality and finality of all nonpersonal potential. Space limits the function of the Unqualified, but the presence of the Unqualified is without limit, infinite."

The Unqualified Absolute is functionally limited to space, but his presence is not thus limited by space.

"There is a concept periphery to the master universe, but the presence of the Unqualified is limitless; even eternity cannot exhaust the boundless quiescence of this nondeity Absolute." "7. The Universal Absolute. Unifier of the deified and the undeified; correlator of the absolute and the relative. The Universal Absolute (being static, potential, and associative) compensates the tension between the ever-existent and the uncompleted."

Anything which is less than Absolute is unfinished. "The Seven Absolutes of Infinity constitute the beginnings of reality. As mortal minds would regard it, the First Source and Center would appear to be antecedent to all absolutes. But such a postulate, however helpful, is invalidated by the eternity co-existence of the Son, the Spirit, the three Absolutes, and the Paradise Isle." "It is a truth that the Absolutes are manifestations of the I AM-First Source and Center; it is a fact that these Absolutes never had a beginning but are co-ordinate Eternals with the First Source and Center. The relationships of absolutes in eternity cannot always be presented without involving paradoxes in the language of time and in the concept patterns of space. But regardless of any confusion concerning the origin of the Seven Absolutes of Infinity, it is both fact and truth that all reality is predicated upon their eternity existence and infinity relationships."

When we get to the last frame, now we're dealing with something that's not only true, but also factual. Back of our last frame, we've got something which has got truth in it, but it's not fact.

(Break in tape).

". . . unity begets duality, duality begets triunity, and triunity is the ancestor" of the ten thousand things. They're paraphrasing it here, I think. And then they take--they again recap everything we've been through.

"Unity relationships" are relationships "within the I AM."

"Duality relationships" exist "between the I AM as sevenfold and the Seven Absolutes of Infinity."

Here we've got our cube, and we are setting up seven duality relationships, six of which are external to the cube, and one of which is internal to the cube.

Going back to the preceding page, on 1155, this relationship is the relationship of "The Universal One of Infinity. I AM as I AM." This is the relationship of the I AM to the First Source and Center. And that is an internal relationship between two realities, in contrast to the other six duality relationships which are external to the I AM. The First Source and Center is internal; all other Absolutes are external.

And now, they introduce the third absolute relationship.

"Triunity relationships. These are the functional associations of the Seven Absolutes of Infinity." And you get Triunity relationships out of "duality foundations because of the inevitability" of such interassociation.

"The I AM is unqualified infinity as unity. The dualities eternalize reality foundations. The triunities eventuate the realization of infinity as universal function."

"In attempting the description of seven triunities, attention is directed to the fact that the Universal Father is the primal member of each. He is, was, and ever will be: the First Universal Father-Source, Absolute Center, Primal Cause, Universal Controller, Limitless Energizer, Original Unity, Unqualified Upholder, First Person of Deity, Primal Cosmic Pattern, and Essence of Infinity. The Universal Father is the personal cause of the Absolutes; he is the absolute of Absolutes."

Gee, there's language in there, isn't there!

"The nature and meaning of the seven triunities may be suggested as:"

Now, let's consider this First Triunity. This is the personal- purposive Triunity. This is not the Paradise Trinity. This is the Father, Son, and Spirit.

"This is the three-fold union of love, mercy, and ministry--the purposive and personal association of the three eternal Paradise personalities. This is divinely fraternal, creature-loving, fatherly-acting, ascension-promoting association. The divine personalities of this first triunity are personality-bequeathing, spirit-bestowing, and mind-endowing Gods."

"This is the triunity of infinite volition; it acts throughout the eternal present and in all of the past-present-future flow of time. This association yields volitional infinity and provides the mechanisms whereby personal Deity becomes self-revelatory to the creatures of the evolving cosmos."

Why isn't this the Paradise Trinity? Let's turn back to the preceding page, and as we analyze the difference between the First Triunity and the Paradise Trinity you are going to get a feeling for the Paradise Trinity that you never had before because up until now, you have been thinking pretty much of the First Triunity when you thought of the Trinity concept. "It would seem that triunity of absolute relationships is inevitable. Personality seeks other personality association on absolute as well as on all other levels. And the association of the three Paradise personalities"--they didn't say Paradise Deities here--"eternalizes the first triunity, the personality union of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. For when these three persons, as persons, conjoin for united function, they thereby constitute a triunity of functional unity, not a trinity--an organic entity--but nonetheless a triunity, a threefold functional aggregate unanimity."

Let's compare three kinds of association with the Father, Son, and Spirit. The Father bestows personality. That's his personal function. He does this all along. The Eternal Son bestows spirit upon the universe. That's his personal function. He does this all along. The Conjoint Creator bestows mind upon the universes. He does this all by himself.

We're thinking of these three, now, as individuals. They're not uncooperative. In fact, because they are divine there is a natural cohesiveness to all of these actions. But you can think of any one of these acts without the other, can't you? The Father may fragment a Thought Adjuster--this doesn't involve the Son or the Spirit in that act.

I think of three people working in three offices, all for the same purpose, but they're performing different functions: one's the Chief of Manufacturing, the Chief Accountant, the Chief of Sales. Do you follow me?

Or three teachers teaching three different subjects in three different classrooms. They're all part of the educational system, but they're individual.

Now, let's consider three men pulling on a rope. I want to compare that with a triunity. This is an aggregate unanimity. Now, the muscular power of each man augments that of the other two. They've all got their hands on the same rope. This is a much closer association than the three teachers, isn't it?

And now, I want you to think of these same three people sitting down as the three directors of a corporation. Now we have a Trinity, because the corporation is a legal person, an entity.

Do you see these three degrees? We're talking about here, basically, the difference between the rope, the three men tugging together on the rope in functional aggregate unanimity, in contrast to an organic entity, a Trinity. "The Paradise Trinity is not a triunity; it is not a functional unanimity; rather is it undivided and indivisible Deity."

You see, again, let's consider a tree. I wanted to have a very funny tree. A Japanese gardener had fun with this tree when it was growing.

This tree sprouted three branches, and after they sprouted, the gardener interlaced them, and then let them grow. So that we have three levels on this tree. First we have the trunk, where there's just one thing there. Then we have three branches interlaced. And then we have three branches growing out.

At the trunk level, we have the Trinity. There's only one thing there. At the interlacing level, we have the First Triunity. They're three branches, but they're still intertwined. And at the upper level of the tree, we have the three distinctly separate persons of Deity.

And no part of the tree is a contradiction of any other part of the tree: the threeness as unrelated, or interassociated, doesn't contravene oneness.

At the top of the tree we have three branches. This is the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit.

Audience: They're not a Trinity?

No, they're three persons--each is a person of Deity. You can go to Paradise and meet each one of them, separately. Now, as you move down where they're interlaced, this is a Triunity relationship.

And, below that, they are one.

And when you deal with the Trinity, you can't find the Father, Son, or Spirit in the Trinity any more than you can find the three branches in the single trunk of the tree.

The living tree, to me, is the best illustration of this three-in-one paradox. And if you interlace the branches, you get a feeling for a Triunity association.

"The Paradise Trinity is not a triunity; it is not a functional unanimity; . . ."

Three men tugging on a rope, the intertwined branches. The Paradise Trinity is "undivided and indivisible Deity. . ."

The corporation, the single trunk of the tree.

"The Father, Son, and Spirit (as persons) can sustain a relationship to the Paradise Trinity, . . ."

And one of these branches can sustain a relationship to the trunk.

" . . .for the Trinity is their undivided Deity. The Father, Son, and Spirit sustain no such personal relationship to the first triunity, for that is their functional union as three persons."

You see, the Deity of the Father is one level, the personality of the Father is another level. When you say Father, Son, and Spirit as Deity, you can't. That is Trinity. You're down at the trunk of the tree.

"Only as the Trinity--as undivided Deity--do they collectively sustain an external relationship to the triunity of their personal aggregation."

If the Father, Son, and Spirit want to sustain a relationship to the first triunity, and do this collectively, they can do this only as the Paradise Trinity.

"Thus does the Paradise Trinity stand unique among absolute relationships, there are several existential triunities but only one existential Trinity. A triunity is not an entity. It is functional rather than organic."

I can't improve on our comparison, the interlacing of the branches versus the singleness of the trunk. There isn't any interlacing in the trunk. It is one.

"Its members are partners rather than corporative."

That's a good way of putting it. Three guys cooperate. That's one thing. Three guys form a partnership. That's something yet again. Three guys organize a corporation. And now for the first time, we have a fourth entity there. The corporation has legal standing. The partnership doesn't have too much standing in the eyes of the law. "The components of the triunities may be entities, but a triunity itself is an association."

"There is, however, one point of comparison between trinity and triunity: Both eventuate in functions: . . ."

Now they're using the word eventuate there in a loose sense. I think you could say "Both result in functions that are something other than the discernible sum of the attributes of the component members. But while they are thus comparable from a functional standpoint, they otherwise exhibit no categorical relationship. They are roughly related as the relation of function to structure. But the function of the triunity association is not the function of the trinity structure or entity."

"The triunities are nonetheless real; they are very real. In them is total reality functionalized, and through them does the Universal Father exercise immediate and personal control over the master functions of infinity."

Now, let's go back and take a look. We now--on the next page, 1148. We now have a better feeling for this First Triunity, don't we? And we know it's not the Trinity. We know the Trinity can sustain a relationship to it. And we now have a better feeling for the word Trinity whenever they use it in these papers. The Trinity is an organic reality, and its personal members can sustain a personal relationship to the Trinity of which they are a part.

Now maybe you can understand the First Experiential Trinity better. The First Experiential Trinity has a lot of people in it. It's got one Supreme Being. It's got over twenty thousand Architects of the Master Universe. It's got in it the Creative Sons and the Creative Spirits--alone you've got a million and a half, nearly--a million four hundred thousand, plus twenty one Ancients of Days, plus Seven Master Spirits. This is a Deity union in the First Experiential Trinity, not a personal presence in the First Experiential Trinity. Audience: I never realized that.

You can't, until you get into this discussion. If you want to symbolize, conceptualize, that Trinity better--you can distort it and say, let's say we'll have the Supreme Being, the Senior Architect of the Master Universe, and the Seventh Master Spirit, you know? You can symbolize it, but it's much more complex.

These Creator Sons can be out in the first outer space level and sustain a personal relationship to the First Experiential Trinity of which, as Deity, they are structurally built in. I'm merely trying to discuss trinity in general. There are three--there are four possible trinities. Three trinities, and then, a big one made up of these three, the Trinity of Trinities. And this is a structural reality, an organic unity.

Here, in the First Experiential Trinity, we start out with the trunk of the tree. But this Trinity has got many thousands of branches, not three. But we still have a trunk. And these branches may be a long ways away from where the trunk is.

(Break in tape).

Let's consider: "The Second Triunity--the power-pattern triunity. Whether it be a tiny ultimaton, a blazing star, or a whirling nebula, even the central or superuniverses, from the smallest to the largest material organizations, always is the physical pattern--the cosmic configuration--derived from the function of this triunity."

The first member intrigues me. It's the Father-Son. There's a lot in here that isn't very understandable. We're going to discuss seven Triunities, and just to mess you up, at the end of their discussion, they say:

"These approximations are sufficient to elucidate the concept of the triunities. Not knowing the ultimate level of the triunities, you cannot fully comprehend the first seven. While we do not deem it wise to attempt any further elaboration, we may state that there are fifteen triune associations of the First Source and Center, eight of which are unrevealed in these papers. These unrevealed associations are concerned with realities, actualities, and potentialities which are beyond the experiential level of supremacy."

"The triunities are the functional balance wheel of infinity, the unification of the uniqueness of the Seven Infinity Absolutes. It is the existential presence of the triunities that enables the Father-I AM to experience functional infinity unity despite the diversification of infinity into seven Absolutes. The First Source and Center is the unifying member of all triunities; in him all things have their unqualified beginnings, eternal existences, and infinite destinies . . ."

"Although these associations cannot augment the infinity of the Father-I AM, they do appear to make possible the subinfinite and subabsolute manifestations of his reality. The seven triunities multiply versatility, eternalize new depths, deitize new values, disclose new potentialities, reveal new meanings; and all these diversified manifestations in time and space and in the eternal cosmos are existent in the hypothetical stasis of the original infinity of the I AM."

We're dealing with levels, here, see? Again, stack these frames up like pancakes. Let's go back to the Second Triunity. If we read the end we understand the middle better.

This is the Father-Son, the Paradise Isle, and the Conjoint Actor. This is the group that started creation going.

"Energy is organized by the cosmic agents of the Third Source and Center; energy is fashioned after the pattern of Paradise, the absolute materialization; but behind all of this ceaseless manipulation is the presence of the Father-Son, whose union first activated the Paradise pattern in the appearance of Havona concomitant with the birth of the Infinite Spirit, the Conjoint Actor."

You see, what they did back there in eternity, when the God of action functioned and the dead vaults of space were stirred, they're still doing. You should not say this did happen, you should say this is happening. It's happening just as much today as it happened then. It never stopped happening.

"In religious experience, creatures make contact with the God who is love, but such spiritual insight must never eclipse the intelligent recognition of the universe fact of the pattern which is Paradise."

God is spirit, but Paradise is not.

"The Paradise personalities enlist the freewill adoration of all creatures by the compelling power of divine love and lead all such spirit-born personalities into the supernal delights of the unending service of the finaliter sons of God. The second triunity is the architect of the space stage whereon these transactions unfold; it determines the patterns of cosmic configuration."

"Love may characterize the divinity of the first triunity, but pattern is the galactic manifestation of the second triunity.

What the first triunity is to evolving personalities, the second triunity is to the evolving universes. Pattern and personality are two of the great manifestations of the acts of the First Source and Center; and no matter how difficult it may be to comprehend, it is nonetheless true that the power-pattern and the loving person are one and the same universal reality; the Paradise Isle and the Eternal Son are co-ordinate but antipodal revelations of the unfathomable nature of the Universal Father-Force."

They're stretching your imagination here. See, we're still studying the First Source and Center, and it's through these relationships we can get a better feeling of the fact that our philosophic postulate of the First Source and Center must exceed our worshipful concept of the Universal Father. "The Third Triunity--the spirit-evolutional triunity. The entirety of spiritual manifestation has its beginning and end in this association, consisting of: 1. The Universal Father.

2. The Son-Spirit."

Isn't that interesting?

"3. The Deity Absolute."

"From spirit potency to Paradise spirit, all spirit finds reality expression in this triune association of the pure spirit essence of the Father, the active spirit values of the Son-Spirit, and the unlimited spirit potentials of the Deity Absolute. The existential values of spirit have their primordial genesis, complete manifestation, and final destiny in this triunity."

"The Father exists before spirit; the Son-Spirit functions as active creative spirit; the Deity Absolute exists as all-encompassing spirit, even beyond spirit."

This is where they get seraphim from, when they create them. This is where supernaphim came from when they were created. Primaries. It's on this relationship that the Master Spirits draw when today they create secondary supernaphim.

"The Fourth Triunity." I'll never forget the first time I read this, I thought, they've got to run out. They can't keep having these, see? What do they do?

"The triunity of energy infinity."

No. Love and volition. Power and pattern. Spirit, now energy. "Within this triunity there eternalizes the beginnings and the endings of all energy reality, from space potency to monota.

"This grouping embraces the following:

1. The Father-Spirit. 2. The Paradise Isle.

3. The Unqualified Absolute."

"Paradise is the center of the force-energy activation of the cosmos--the universe position of the First Source and Center, the cosmic focal point of the Unqualified Absolute, and the source of all energy. Existentially present within this triunity is the energy potential of the cosmos-infinite, of which the grand universe and the master universe are only partial manifestations."

Audience: There it is.

There it is, cold turkey.

"The fourth triunity absolutely controls the fundamental units of cosmic energy and releases them from the grasp of the Unqualified Absolute in direct proportion to the appearance in the experiential Deities of subabsolute capacity to control and stabilize the metamorphosing cosmos."

"This triunity is force and energy. The endless possibilities of the Unqualified Absolute are centered around the absolutum"--the stuff--"of the Isle of Paradise, whence emanate the unimaginable agitations of the otherwise static quiescence of the Unqualified. And the endless throbbing of the material Paradise heart of the infinite cosmos beats in harmony with the unfathomable pattern and the unsearchable plan of the Infinite Energizer, the First Source and Center."

This whole thing is alive, and Paradise is the heart that beats, that pulsates. Let's turn to page 469 where they discuss what goes on with this triunity. Here is the discussion of universal, nonspiritual energy systems, physical energies. This discussion starts out with a discussion of the conversion of potentials into actuals and ends with a discussion of actuals that exist from eternity. They start out with space potency. This is what came from Paradise and passed into the control of the Unqualified Absolute.

I think of Paradise as the pitcher, the Unqualified Absolute as the catcher, and the baseball was the uncreated stuff of the unbegun universes of the eternal future. And ever since then they've been unraveling that baseball. Do you follow me? It came from Paradise. But Paradise made that bestowal just once. And he made it without limit. And since the Unqualified Absolute is limitless, he could catch an infinite baseball.

Audience: He'll never unwind it.

No.

Space potency is the beginning of energy as we view it, and it's spoken of as absoluta. That is the neuter form, in Latin, of which absolutum is the masculine form. I think they picked those words designedly. Absolutum is the stuff of Paradise. Absoluta is that which came from Paradise and which is the ultimate ancestor of all matter.

Now, as we read this, from space potency down to universe power--as we go through the first four stages here, but not beyond that--I want you to visualize the crystallization of water vapor. I want you to stop and think how this room is filled with invisible water vapor. And as this water vapor emerges to the recognition of our sensory mechanism, our eyes, first of all it fogs a little. Then a real cloud forms. This is distinct.

These clouds look so darn real, it looks almost as though you could sit on one, you know, in contrast to the blue sky. These clouds didn't come from nothing, though, did they? That water vapor was there all the time. And then let's go on and let water rain out of this cloud. It's getting more tangible isn't it? And then let the water freeze. And now we get something we can rap. (Knocks with knuckles on table). This is very real. In contrast to the seeming unreality of invisible water vapor to our senses.

The next step is primordial force. Now, primordial force is something that is still water vapor, that still wouldn't register, but in some way it's different from space potency.

Primordial force emerges from space potency, not because of anything which the force organizers do, but simply because they go out there. It's probably happened already. It's probably a function of this fourth triunity. It's probably a function of the Conjoint Actor, the infinite manipulator. They speak of it as segregata. I think that word should suggest to us that here is something which has been segregated from something which is not qualified. This is a chunk, now, apart from the whole.

As we turn the page, we discover that we're going to talk about two levels of emergent energy--emerging from invisibility to visibility. Here is where fog appears, and the cloud gets very real and solid looking.

Emergent energy goes through two phases. The primary master force organizers now go to work. They really go to work. What's happened before--it's a little difficult to say that they did it. Let's say they consummated something which perhaps the Third Source and Center did. But now, they take over. They operate on the less visible, more tenuous side of emergent energy.

They produce puissant energy. Puissant is a good English word meaning powerful. "Yon puissant prince," says Shakespeare. And here we have direction: clockwise, counterclockwise motion would be indigenous to puissant energy. And here, for the first time, Paradise gravity begins to reach out in a tenuous way.

Now, this was the condition of affairs, in fact this 3-A stage was pretty well completed when they begin the story of the Andronover Nebula, because it was an Associate Master Force Organizer who came out into these regions and discovered that things looked right for materialization. His senior colleagues, the Primary Force Organizers, hadn't told him anything. He had to find this. And it was the Uversa Council of Equilibrium made up of Associate Force Organizers and Power Directors which issued the permit authorizing him to come out here and initiate the Andronover nebula. But everything we've read here up until now had already gone on before.

As it says on page 651, just before they use their first date of 987 billion years ago when this associate force organizer discovered this situation. The preceding sentence reads:

"At the time of the beginning of this recital, the Primary Master Force Organizers of Paradise had long been in full control of the space-energies which were later organized as the Andronover nebula."

They never tell us how long they've been there. They tell us when the Associate Force Organizers took over. These Associate Force Organizers then go to work, and now, it's beginning to rain. Now we're getting something pretty tangible, because we not only have Paradise gravity beginning to operate, but local gravity is beginning to operate.

In the case of Andronover, they worked for about 100 billion years. And then they stepped aside, and the Power Directors of Orvonton took over when we passed from stage 3 to stage 4. In outer space, there are no Power Directors available, and so these Associate Force Organizers would continue right on fostering the further development of the suns and star systems of the outer space levels. This level of the active function of the Primary Force Organizers starting with clouds and ending with rain is spoken of as ultimata. And this is the energy domain of the emerging Ultimate, God the Ultimate. We are now on the second floor of the firehouse.

God the Ultimate has to do with power. If I were to christen the power phase of the Ultimate, I would refer to it as the omnipotent, a term analogous to the Almighty in relation to the Supreme.

Audience: That is a new idea to me.

Yes. You see, you've come down from the control of the Unqualified Absolute as absoluta, to segregata, where the God of Action is involved. And if any compensating action is involved, the Universal Absolute's involved. Then, to this level, of the active function of the Primary Force Organizers and the active function of the Secondary Force Organizers. This is the transcendental level. The Architects of the Master Universe are directing these people. This is the second floor of the firehouse.

Absoluta is on the third floor of the firehouse. Segregata is either at the floor of the third floor or at the ceiling of the middle floor--I don't know which. But ultimata is down on the second floor, the middle floor.

Now we come down into the bottom floor of the firehouse, universe power. This is the energy domain of the Supreme, and it's spoken of as gravita--because it responds to linear gravity, I think.

Now we've got ice. This is very tangible. Now we've got everything that we know about in the domain of physics. We now have electricity, we have magnetism, we have chemism, we have elements, isotopes, and what not.

As these papers describe things, we may get up into the lower levels of gravity energy.

Audience: By we, you mean--Urantia physicists.

Our physicists.

Now, this is the end of the story as far as the evolution of energy and matter is concerned in time and space. The rest of this story concerns a tracing back of the trail through eternity, because the next energy we talk about is triata. This is the material stuff of the one billion Havona worlds. Space potency went into outer space. We've been considering how it is released down. And now, instead of dealing with the transactions of the extra-Havona space levels--

Audience: Superuniverse.

And outer. We're now going in to Havona, and we're going to examine the rest of the story of energy. But this has nothing to do with space potency, I don't think. Well, here's a question. Let me ask you something. When Paradise produced the material of Havona, did it technically go through space potency to become Havona, or did it come out direct? I don't know. It's not important. You could debate that one either way.

In a sense, we're looking at a big curve like this. We started with absoluta, and it got less and less absolute as we brought it down. And now we retrace our way into Paradise, we're going to see this swing back toward something absolute again.

Audience: Space potency has to do with evolutionary development only?

Yes, I think so. Space potency is concerned with any materialization in the superuniverses or the outer space levels. Audience: Well, then Havona--wouldn't have come through it.

Havona is eternal. I doubt that it would, yes. Whether it did or not is beside the point. What gravita is out here, triata is in Havona. Gravita discusses our physical realities, all those which are known to us. And our mass materialization is twofold. Our atoms have two charges, positive and negative. In Havona, they have three charges, positive, negative, and something else. Matter has different properties in Havona than it has out here. It's not this kind of matter. But it's physical. For one thing, they use worlds in Havona that would be asinine out here because of too much gravity.

But you can have enormously massive worlds in Havona, and it doesn't build up to that much gravity. It builds up to gravity, but not that much.

I'm not at all certain that a Havona world isn't a heck of a lot larger than the sphere Jupiter. On Jupiter the gravity pull would squish us flat. We would just spread out here on Bud's floor here like maple syrup.In fact, we'd seek the cracks, that's how strong the pull would be. We'd just liquefy on Jupiter. Now, this is the existential or eternal energy domain of the Conjoint Actor, functioning on behalf of the Paradise Trinity. Havona energy.

There's still another form of energy. It operates on and from the upper level of Paradise, and only in connection with the absonite peoples. They call it tranosta. And they don't say whose energy domain it is. You see, now we've gotten to something superfinite. This is transcendental energy.

Audience: It's on the second or third floor of the firehouse?

The second. Now we're going to the third floor of the firehouse, right where we started out, where we deal with the energy of Paradise itself, called monota. We measure energy down here with amp meters and volt meters.

Let's say that you could have a universal amp meter-volt meter, which you could use on Paradise. And you could clamp this amp meter-volt meter on the Eternal Son and measure Paradise Spirit. You'd get a reading. Then you could plant this on the stuff of Paradise, and take a reading on monota. And you would get exactly the same readings, because on Paradise, the physical energy of the Eternal Isle and the Spiritual energy of the Eternal Son are just plain exactly the same.

The only way you can tell one from the other is to recognize the source of the energy, and if it comes from the Eternal Son, you say this is Paradise spirit; and if it comes from the Eternal Isle, you say this is Paradise monota. And the only way you distinguish them is by name.

Let's illuminate this. We're on page 638. They're discussing universal unity. They say (paragraph 3), "Pure energy is the ancestor of all relative, nonspirit functional realities, while pure spirit is the potential of the divine and directive overcontrol of all basic energy systems. And these realities, so diverse as manifested throughout space and as observed in the motions of time, are both centered in the person of the Paradise Father. In him they are one--must be unified--because God is one. The Father's personality is absolutely unified.

"In the infinite nature of God the Father there could not possible exist duality of reality, such as physical and spiritual; but the instant we look aside from the infinite levels and absolute reality of the personal values of the Paradise Father, we observe the existence of these two realities and recognize that they are fully responsive to his personal presence; in him all things consist."

As you begin to ponder Paradise monota and Paradise spirit, you begin to realize they have to be identical because they are the original expressions of the nature of God. Now you begin to see why a Thought Adjuster travels the Paradise gravity circuits. What is the spirit nature of a Thought Adjuster? The nature of a Thought Adjuster is a fragment of something, which, when expressed, is known as either Paradise monota or Paradise spirit.

"The moment you depart from the unqualified concept of the infinite personality of the Paradise Father, you must postulate mind as the inevitable technique of unifying the ever-widening divergence of these dual universe manifestations of the original monothetic Creator personality, the First Source and Center--the I AM."

Well, back to page 1149, we have been exploring the Fourth Triunity. Does this bore you all? Audience: No. No. No. Oh, no.

"The Fifth Triunity--the triunity of reactive infinity. This association consists of:

1. The Universal Father.

2. The Universal Absolute.

3. The Unqualified Absolute.

This grouping yields. . ."

It gets a little rough about here.

" . . .the eternalization of the functional infinity realization of all that is actualizable within the domains of nondeity reality."

This is the pure potential deal.

"This triunity manifests unlimited reactive capacity to the volitional, causative, tensional, and patternal actions and presences of the other triunities."

This is a passive-reactive Triunity. I always think of the old Zoroastrian's critique of the Book of Genesis. It's in the Pehlevi texts. He's lambasting the author of Genesis, who says that God was alone. He said it's obvious he was not alone, because when he commanded things to happen, they happened. And this means that there was also present an obeyer of commands.

(Break in tape).

"The Sixth Triunity--the triunity of cosmic-associated Deity. This grouping consists of:

1. The Universal Father.

2. The Deity Absolute.

3. The Universal Absolute."

These last two are the Father in relation to two Absolutes.

"This is the association of Deity-in-the-cosmos, the immanence of Deity in conjunction with the transcendence of Deity."

Remember all the theological arguments about, is God immanent, or is God transcendent? He's both. But in this Triunity, he's immanent.

"This is the last outreach of divinity on the levels of infinity toward those realities which lie outside the domain of deified reality."

I don't understand that very well. Let's face it.