The Urantia Book Fellowship

A Study of the Master Universe:
A Development of Concepts in the Urantia Book

Bill Sadler (William S. Sadler, Jr.)
Copyright © 1968 Second Society Foundation

Table of Contents for This Study



Chapter 1: The Creative Thesis of Perfection: The Finite Story

With the opening of the Second Universe Age - the present age - we have actually started our study of the master universe. This Second Age, like the four ages that follow it, is comprehensible. It had an origin in time and it will have an ending in time - it has definite duration.

After our excursion into past eternity (see Lesson 1) this is comforting.

1. The Dawn of Time: Beginning of the Second Age

Just what is it that ends the age of Havona and begins the age of the superuniverses? As we study the Papers, it is apparent that this was not a sudden happening; it came about gradually, like the dawning of a new day. The twilight of the First Age gradually became the dawn of the Second Age.

(Long before the Second Age was an official reality, we suspect

that the Architects of the Master Universe had their deputies, the Force Organizers, out in the superuniverse space level working on the mobilization of energy, organizing nebulae, and getting things physically started in anticipation of events to come.)

Probably the first event that would be really post-eternal (post-Havona) was the creation of the Seven Master Spirits. These high Spirits are not absolute beings; however, they represent Paradise Deity on every level below the absolute - finite, absonite, and finite-absonite. (Or, to state it in more usual language: Supreme, Ultimate, and Supreme-Ultimate.) These Master Spirits are not existential; they are experiential. They are the first expressions of experiential Deity. They also personally express the seven possible combinations of the Three Persons of Deity: Father, Son, Spirit, Father-Son, Father-Spirit, Son-Spirit, and Father-Son-Spirit. There could not possibly be any more or any fewer Master Spirits; seven are all that is mathematically possible - and this is why the superuniverse space level was divided into seven parts. Each Master Spirit presides over one of these seven parts, one of the seven superuniverses.

Sometime during this twilight period, another thing happened: God the Supreme appeared in Havona. His presence was derived from the Paradise Trinity, and be came into existence as a spirit person. He was resident in the central universe before the superuniverses were formally organized. Then, as now, he was not contactable by creatures.

Then came the mandate of the Paradise Trinity organizing the grand universe - the seven superuniverses in relation to Havona. At about this time, the Trinity must have created the 21 Ancients of Days; the triune rulers of the seven supercreations. Shortly thereafter, the headquarters worlds of the seven superuniverses were constructed, and the Ancients of Days probably departed from Paradise to take up residence on their respective capital spheres. As the Papers say, they have ruled the superuniverses since "near eternity."

At some later point in time, the Father and Son must have begun the creation of the Creator Sons, with the Infinite Spirit responding by the complemental production of Creative Spirits. In due time, these Universe Sons and Spirits were commissioned as rulers of local universes - the oldest of the local creations. Now, the Second Age is in full bloom. Soon the evolutionary mortals made their appearance on the worlds of space; then began the long Paradise ascent of the pilgrims of time in the quest for the Universal Father.

Experiential beings

All these newly-appearing beings are experiential in nature; They are not existential. This is true from the creature level of mortal man right on up to the deity levels of the Master Spirits and God the Supreme. These beings do not know all before they have experienced all; they have the capacity to learn and to grow with learning and living. This is true even of the creators, themselves, and is most clearly seen in the creators of the local universes - the Creator Sons and the Creative Spirits. Service in the time-space creations, experience in the organizing and perfecting of the local universes, changes the status of these Universe Sons and Spirits - they grow.

2. God the Sevenfold: Creative Deity

The creative-association of God the Sevenfold began to function when the seven superuniverses were organized. God the Sevenfold is a creative associative expansion of the Paradise Deities into time and space; this is their method of making contact with all the creatures of the super- and local universes. God the Sevenfold provides the living ladder of divine personalities that bridges the gap between man and the Paradise Father. This deity association functions on seven levels and its members are clasified in three major groups.

The Paradise Deities -- Experiential Deity

We are familiar with the Paradise Deities - Father, Son, and Spirit. The Corps of the Supreme Creators is something new. These are the creators who make their appearance after eternal Havona; they are the post-Havona creators. Theirs is the work of organizing and perfecting the seven superuniverses and the projected 700,000 local universes. Each of the Master Spirits pervades one of the superuniverses, thus determining its individual nature. By threes, the Ancients of Days function as the direct rulers of the seven supercreations. The Creator Sons (and their associated Creative Spirits) organize the local universes, and create (or evolve) the living beings who are native to these realms.

The Supreme Being is an evolving, experiential Deity. He is slowly emerging, as a result of the successes of the Supreme Creators in the time-space realms, as a result of their successful collaboration with the Paradise Deities, and as a result of his own efforts to grow.

Creative Deity

At this point, we should stop to consider that Deity appears to be working on a new level of activity. In the Prologue we recognized that Deity started on the static level, progressed to the potential level, and was working on the associative level at the dawn of the First Age. Apparently one of the basic differences between the First and the Second Ages is Deity's entrance upon the fourth level of activity - the creative level. What does this mean? It means that Deity is now beginning to draw upon the great reservoirs of latent reality - the potentials of the three Absolutes. These basic potentials (pre-spirit, pre-mind, and pre-matter) are now being so transformed that they are beginning to emerge in the new universes as new spirit, new mind, and new matter.

The creative process is actually a transforming process; potentials are transformed into actuals - something new has come into existence. It may be a new spirit personality, a new level of the function of mind, or the organization of a new physical nebula in space that will become the material substance of some new local universe. All of these "new realities" have to come from somewhere, and the "somewhere" from which they emerge is (in the final analysis) the three Absolutes of Potentiality.

3. Havona in the Second Age: The Thesis of Perfection

In the Prologue to our study we gave consideration to Havona in the First Age; there we studied Havona as a precreative existence - something that actually had no beginning. Technically, this is probably the correct way to classify the central universe; but, from a practical standpoint, when we consider Havona in relation to the superuniverses, it is a creation; it is the pattern universe of divine perfection.

Havona, in the Second Age, is the divine thesis of perfection - God's challenge to the imperfection of the encircling, evolutionary universes. To each creature, God has made a challenging invitation, "Be you perfect even as I am perfect." To all the Creator Sons and Creative Spirits in the evolutionary local universes, Havona presents God's challenge of a universe of divine perfection. This is the challenge: Can these Universe Sons and Spirits, by experiential creation and evolution, duplicate in their time-space domains the eternal perfection of the existential universe at the center of all things?

Coming Events Cast Their shadows

If Havona is a challenge to the imperfection of the superuniverses, the superuniverses (with all their needs) are no less of a challenge to Havona. The central creation responds to this challenge long before the first of the mortal ascenders ever reaches these settled realms. As the First Age enters into its "twilight period" (which is also the "dawn" of the Second Age) change, for the first time, enters changeless Havona. New beings appear. The seven circuits of Havona are eternal, but now Circuit Spirits are discovered to be functioning in each of these seven divisions. Power Centers take up their perpetual stations on the seven circuits. Universal Censors are assigned to each of the billion spheres. The central creation is preparing itself for the events of the future.

Grandfanda

The arrival in Havona of Grandfanda, the first mortal pilgrim, triggers a multitude of new developments. New orders of ministering spirits (secondary supernaphim) appear; the Citizens of Paradise begin their pilgrimage outward through Havona; the first of the Graduate Guides greets Grandfanda; and many other unmentioned, but important, changes must take place in the universe of divine perfection. The ascenders from the superuniverses are bringing the seeds of the evolutionary growth-process into the central creation. In the Second Age Havona is still precreative and eternal, but it also becomes creative and changing - even evolutional.