Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 12
THE UNIVERSE OF UNIVERSES
1. The immensity of the far-flung creation of the Universal Father is utterly beyond the grasp of finite imagination...We are convinced ... that much of the cosmic potential of the Infinite is still self-contained and unrevealed. To created beings the master universe might appear to be almost Infinite, but it is far from finished.
2. The observable behavior of the material creation constitutes evidence of a physical universe of definite limits. ..Proceeding outward from Paradise through the horizontal extension of pervaded space, the master universe is existent in six concentric ellipses, the space levels encircling the central Isle:
1. The Central Universe—Havona.
2. The Seven Superuniverses.
3. The First Outer Space Level.
4. The Second Outer Space Level.
5. The Third Outer Space Level.
6. The Fourth and Outermost Space Level.
3. Havona, the central universe, is not a time creation; it is an eternal existence. This never-beginning, never-ending universe consists of one billion spheres of sublime perfection and is surrounded by the enormous dark gravity bodies....the eternal universe encircling the eternal Isle, constitutes the perfect and eternal nucleus of the master universe.
4. The Seven Superuniverses are not primary physical organizations; nowhere do their boundaries divide a nebular family, neither do they cross a local universe, a prime creative unit. Each superuniverse is simply a geographic space clustering of approximately one seventh of the organized and partially inhabited post-Havona creation. Nebadon, your local universe, is one of the newer creations in Orvonton, the seventh superuniverse.
5. The Grand Universe is the present organized and inhabited creation. It consists of the seven superuniverses, with an aggregate evolutionary potential of around seven trillion inhabited planets, not to mention the eternal spheres of the central creation.
6. The Outer Space Levels. Far out in space, at an enormous distance from the seven inhabited superuniverses, there are assembling vast and unbelievably stupendous circuits of force and materializing energies...the four outer space levels are undoubtedly destined to eventuate-evolve the ultimacy of creation. And there are those who maintain that the Infinite can never attain full expression short of infinity; and therefore do they postulate an additional and unrevealed creation beyond the fourth and outermost space level, a possible ever-expanding, never-ending universe of infinity.
7. Most of the starry realms visually exposed to the search of your present- day telescopes are in Orvonton, but with photographic technique the larger telescopes penetrate far beyond the borders of the grand universe into the domains of outer space...The physicists of Uversa calculate that the energy and matter of these outer and uncharted regions already equal many times the total material mass and energy charge embraced in all seven superuniverses...We know very little of the significance of these tremendous phenomena of outer space... As far as we know, no material beings on the order of humans, no angels or other spirit creatures, exist in this outer ring of nebulae, suns, and planets...Throughout Orvonton it is believed that a new type of creation is in process, an order of universes destined to become the scene of the future activities of the assembling Corps of the Finality.
8. All forms of force-energy—material, mindal, or spiritual are alike subject to those grasps, those universal presences, which we call gravity...the Universal Father is infinite and acts over all four absolute-gravity circuits in the master universe:
1. The Personality Gravity of the Universal Father.
2. The Spirit Gravity of the Eternal Son.
3. The Mind Gravity of the Conjoint Actor.
4. The Cosmic Gravity of the Isle of Paradise.
These four circuits...are absolute presence circuits and like God are independent of time and space.
9. The relatively motionless midspace zones impinging on Paradise and separating pervaded from unpervaded space are the transition zones from time to eternity, hence the necessity of Paradise pilgrims becoming unconscious during this transit when it is to culminate in Paradise citizenship. Time- conscious visitors can go to Paradise without thus sleeping, but they remain creatures of time.
10. Man's mind is less time-bound than space-bound because of the inherent nature of mind. Even during the days of the earth life in the flesh, though man's mind is rigidly space-bound, the creative human imagination is comparatively time free.
11. Unspiritual animals know only the past and live in the present. Spirit- indwelt man has powers of prevision (insight); he may visualize the future. Only forward-looking and progressive attitudes are personally real. Static ethics and traditional morality are just slightly superanimal. Nor is stoicism a high order of self-realization. Ethics and morals become truly human when they are dynamic and progressive, alive with universe reality. The human personality is not merely a concomitant of time-and-space events; the human personality can also act as the cosmic cause of such events.
12. The universe is nonstatic. Stability is not the result of inertia but rather the product of balanced energies, co-operative minds, co-ordinated morontias, spirit overcontrol, and personality unification. Stability is wholly and always proportional to divinity.
13. In all your contemplation of universal phenomena, make certain that you take into consideration the interrelation of physical, intellectual, and spiritual energies, and that due allowance is made for the unexpected phenomena attendant upon their unification by personality and for the unpredictable phenomena resulting from the actions and reactions of experiential Deity and the Absolutes.
14. The universe is highly predictable only in the quantitative or gravity-measurement sense...qualitatively, the universe is not highly predictable as regards new associations of forces, either physical, mindal, or spiritual, although many such combinations of energies or forces become partially predictable when subjected to critical observation. When matter, mind, and spirit are unified by creature personality, we are unable fully to predict the decisions of such a freewill being.
15. Individuals have their guardians of destiny; planets, systems, constellations, universes, and superuniverses each have their respective rulers who labor for the good of their domains ... But who fosters and cares for the fundamental needs of the master universe as a whole, from Paradise to the fourth and outermost space level? Existentially such overcare is probably attributable to the Paradise Trinity, but from an experiential viewpoint the appearance of the post-Havona universes is dependent on:
1. The Absolutes in potential.
2. The Ultimate in direction.
3. The Supreme in evolutionary co-ordination.
4. The Architects of the Master Universe in administration prior to the appearance of specific rulers.
16. The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of repeatedly doing things; and he ever does all things well...if the demands of perfection might for any reason dictate another method of reaction, a better one, then and there would the all-wise God function in that better and more suitable way...Because God in changeless, therefore can you depend, in all ordinary circumstances, on his doing the same thing in the same identical and ordinary way. God is the assurance of stability for all created things and beings...And all this steadfastness of conduct and uniformity of action is personal, conscious, and highly volitional, for the great God is not a helpless slave to his own perfection and infinity.
17. The love of the Father absolutely individualizes each personality as a unique child of the Universal Father, a child without duplicate in infinity, a will creature irreplaceable in all eternity...This very love of God for the individual brings into being the divine family of all individuals, the universal brotherhood of the freewill children of the Paradise Father... Brotherhood, when universal, discloses not the each relationship, but the all relationship...Brotherhood constitutes a fact of relationship between every personality in universal existence. No person can escape the benefits or the penalties that may come as a result of relationship to other persons...The relative velocities of part and whole determine whether the part is retarded by the inertia of the whole or is carried forward by the momentum of the cosmic brotherhood.
18. Even though the spirit of a Son be poured out upon all flesh, even though a Son once dwelt with you in the likeness of mortal flesh, even though the seraphim personally guard and guide you, how can any of these divine beings of the Second and Third Centers ever hope to come as near to you or to understand you as fully as the Father, who has given a part of himself to be in you, to be your real and divine, even your eternal, self?
19. The goal of existence of all personalities is spirit; material manifestations are relative, and the cosmic mind intervenes between these universal opposites...On Paradise the three energies, physical, mindal, and spiritual, are co-ordinate. In the evolutionary cosmos energy-matter is dominant except in personality, where spirit, through the mediation of mind, is striving for the mastery...Spirit is unchanging, and therefore, in all personality relations, it transcends both mind and matter, which are experiential variables of progressive attainment.
20. Man's true destiny consists in the creation of new and spirit goals and then in responding to the cosmic allurements of such supernal goals of nonmaterial value. Love is the secret of beneficial association between personalities.
21. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance—liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical -phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.
22. Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property. Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn.
23. Your religion is becoming real because it is emerging from the slavery of fear and the bondage of superstition. Your philosophy struggles for emancipation from dogma and tradition. Your science is engaged in the agelong contest between truth and error while it fights for deliverance from the bondage of abstraction, the slavery of mathematics, and the relative blindness of mechanistic materialism.
24. Mortal man has a spirit nucleus...Real trouble, lasting disappointment, serious defeat, or inescapable death can come only after self-concepts presume fully to displace the governing power of the central spirit nucleus, thereby disrupting the cosmic scheme of personality identity.
Discussion Questions
1. How has contemporary astronomy prepared us to accept an expanded spiritual cosmology?
2. How free are we from the bondage of dogma and tradition?
3. Is knowledge of our expanded physical and spiritual cosmology going to change the interrelationships of the religions of the world?
4. What is the best way to prepare for the unexpected and unpredictable events of experience?
5. Why has Western Civilization been dominated by mechanistic materialism and the fallacies of analytical reductionism? How does abstraction and the “slavery of mathematics” handicap science?
6. How do we use spiritual resources to dominate our minds and shape our physiological bodies?
7. How can our spirit nucleus deliver us from disappointment and the effects of defeat?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship