Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 9
RELATION OF THE INFINITE SPIRIT TO THE UNIVERSE
1. The Father is infinite in love and volition, in spiritual thought and purpose; he is the universal upholder. The Son is infinite in wisdom, and truth, in spiritual expression and interpretation: he is the universal revealer. Paradise is infinite in potential for force endowment and in capacity, for energy dominance; it is the universal stabilizer. The Conjoint Actor possesses unique prerogatives of synthesis, infinite capacity to co-ordinate all existing universe energies, all actual universe spirits, and all real universe intellects ...The Conjoint Actor is the revelation of the unity of God.2. The Third Source and Center is known by many names, all designative of relationship and in recognition of function: As God the Spirit...the Infinite Spirit...the Universal Manipulator...the Conjoint Actor...the Absolute Mind...the God of Action.
3. The Paradise Trinity has ordained the universal order of progress, and the providence of God is the domain of the Conjoint Creator and the evolving Supreme Being. No actual or actualizing realty can escape eventual relationship with the Third Source and Center.
4. He functions specifically wherever and whenever energy and spirit associate and interact; he dominates all reactions with mind, wields great power in the spiritual world, and exerts a mighty influence over energy and matter...The Third Source and Center perfectly and without qualification shares the omnipresence of the First Source and Center ...but is actually omnipotent only in the domain of mind. The Third Person of Deity is the intellectual center and the universal administrator of the mind realms; herein is he absolute—his sovereignty is unqualified.
5. In addition to this supercontrol of energy and things physical, the Infinite Spirit is superbly endowed with those attributes of patience, mercy, and love which are so exquisitely revealed in his spiritual ministry...The universe of your origin is being forged out between the anvil of justice and the hammer of suffering; but those who wield the hammer are the children of mercy, the spirit offspring of the Infinite Spirit.
6. There are many untrammeled lines of spiritual force and sources of super-material power linking the people of Urantia directly with the Deities of Paradise. There exist the connection of the Thought Adjusters, direct with the Universal Father, the widespread influence of the spiritual-gravity urge of the Eternal Son, and the spiritual presence of the Conjoint Creator ...In addition to these Paradise presences, Urantians benefit by the spiritual influences and activities of the local and the superuniverse, with their almost endless array of loving personalities who ever lead the true of purpose and the honest of heart upward and inward towards the ideals of divinity and the goal of supreme perfection ...These divine spirits which work for man’s uplifting and spiritualization all act in unison and in perfect co-operation.
7. The Infinite Spirit possesses a unique and amazing power—antigravity ...The Conjoint Creator is not energy nor the source of energy nor the destiny of energy; he is the manipulator of energy. The Conjoint Creator is action—motion, change, modification, co-ordination, stabilization, and equilibrium ...The universe of universes is permeated by the power-control creatures of the Third Source and Center; physical controllers, power directors, power centers, and other representatives of the God of Action who have to do with the regulation and stabilization of physical energies.
8. There is an intellectual nature of the Third Source and Center that is distinct from his physical and spiritual attributes...The absolute mind is the mind of the Third Person; it is inseparable from the personality of God the Spirit. Mind, in functioning beings, is not separated from energy or spirit, or both. Mind is not inherent in energy; energy is receptive and responsive to mind; mind can be superimposed upon energy, but consciousness is not inherent in the purely material level. Mind does not have to be added to pure spirit, for spirit is innately conscious and identifying. Spirit is always intelligent, minded in some way.
9. Infinite mind ignores time, ultimate mind transcends time, cosmic mind is conditioned by time...Cosmic force responds to mind even as cosmic mind responds to spirit...Energy is thing, mind is meaning, spirit is value ...The Paradise ascent involves a relative and differential growth in spirit, mind, and energy. The personality is the unifier of these components of experiential individuality.
10. The unique feature of mind is that it can be bestowed upon such a wide range of life. Through his creative and creature associates the Third Source and Center ministers to all minds on all spheres. He ministers to human and subhuman intellect through the adjutants of the local universes and, through the agency of the physical controllers, ministers even to the lowest nonexperiencing entities of the most primitive types of living things.
11. Because the Third Person is the source of mind, do not presume to reckon that all phenomena of mind are divine. Human intellect is rooted in the material origin of the animal races. Universe intelligence is no more a true revelation of God who is mind than is physical nature a true revelation of the beauty and harmony of Paradise...The plan for your intellectual evolution is, indeed, one of sublime perfection, but you are far short of that divine goal as you function in the tabernacles of the flesh.
12. Too often, all too often, you mar your minds by insincerity and sear them with unrighteousness; you subject them to animal fear and distort them by useless anxiety...The contemplation of the immature and inactive intellect should lead only to reactions of humility.
13. Much as the Father draws all personality to himself, and an the Son attracts all spiritual reality, so does the Conjoint Actor exercise a drawing power on all minds; he unqualifiedly dominates and controls the universal mind circuit. All true and genuine intellectual values, all divine thoughts and perfect ideas, are unerringly drawn into this absolute circuit of mind.
14. The greater the spirit-energy divergence, the greater the observable function of mind... Apparently, the maximum function of the cosmic mind is in the time universes of space. Here mind seems to function in a mid-zone between energy and spirit, but this is not true of the higher levels of mind; on Paradise, energy and spirit are essentially one.
15. The mind-gravity circuit is dependable; it emanates from the Third Person of Deity on Paradise, but not all the observable function of mind is predictable...There is much about mind that is unknown, but of this we are sure: The Infinite Spirit is the perfect expression of the mind of the Creator to all creatures; the Supreme Being is the evolving expression of the minds of all creatures to their Creator.
16. The Conjoint Actor is able to co-ordinate all levels of universe actuality in such manner as to make possible the simultaneous recognition of the mental, the material, and the spiritual. This is the phenomenon of universe reflectivity, that unique and inexplicable power to see, hear, sense, and know all things as they transpire throughout a superuniverse, and to focalize, by reflectivity, all this information and knowledge at any desired point...Reflectivity appears to be omniscience within the limits of the experiential finite and may represent the emergence of the presence-consciousness of the Supreme Being.
17. The Infinite Spirit possesses full power to transmit many of his powers and prerogatives to his co-ordinate and subordinate personalities and agencies. The first Deity-creating act of the Infinite Spirit, functioning apart from the Trinity but in some unrevealed association with the Father and the Son, personalized in the existence of the Seven Master Spirits of Paradise, the distributors of the Infinite Spirit to the universes.
18. The next and continuing creative act of the Infinite Spirit is disclosed, from time to time, in the production of the Creative Spirits. Every time the Universal Father and the Eternal Son become parent to a Creator Son, the Infinite Spirit becomes ancestor to a local universe Creative Spirit who becomes the close associate of that Creator Son in all subsequent universe experience.
19. The Third Source and Center is represented in the grand universe by a vast array of ministering spirits, messengers, teachers, adjudicators, helpers, and advisers, together with supervisors of certain circuits of physical morontial, and spiritual nature.
20. There are creator personalities and creature personalities, and in addition to these two fundamental types there are personalities of the Third Source and Center, beings who are personal to the Infinite Spirit, but who are not unqualifiedly personal to creature beings. These Third Source personalities are not a part of the Father's personality circuit...Both First Source and Third Source personalities are endowed with all and more than man associates with the concept of personality; they have minds embracing memory, reason, judgment, creative imagination, idea association, decision, choice, and numerous additional powers of intellect wholly unknown to mortals. With few exceptions the orders revealed to you possess form and distinct individuality; they are real beings.
21. The functional family of the Third Source and Center, as it is revealed in these narratives, falls into three great groups:
I. The Supreme Spirits...
1.The Seven Master Spirits of Paradise.
2.The Reflective Spirits of the Superuniverses.
3.The Creative Spirits of the Local Universes.
II. The Power Directors...
III. The Personalities of the Infinite Spirit...
1.The Higher Personalities of the Infinite Spirit.
2.The Messenger Hosts of Space.
3.The Ministering Spirits of Time...
These spirit beings constitute the living ladder whereby mortal man climbs from chaos to glory.
Discussion Questions
1. How would you define mind as it functions on our planet in human and subhuman life? How can we prevent useless anxiety and animal fear?
2. How should we understand divine providence?
3. How is mind related to progress?
4. How do the angels administer the “hammers of suffering?”
5. How do we distinguish jumps in evolutionary progress from revolutionary change?
6. If mind can be superimposed on energy, could this be the source of the placebo effect?
7. How does mind quality effect health?
8. How do we achieve the mastery of our minds?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship