Episode:Experiential Deity—God the Supreme (Part 3)

Experiential Deity—God the Supreme (Part 3)
Broadcast on	September 8, 2020
Episode #	509
Study of	[Paper 117:3, p. 1281]

Mortal man is more than figuratively made in the image of God. From a physical standpoint this statement is hardly true, but with reference to certain universe potentialities it is an actual fact. Man, a volitional personality, becomes creative in liaison with an Adjuster, in the presence of the finite potentialities of the Supreme, and the result is the flowering of an immortal soul.

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Keywords: Urantia, The Paradise Trinity, Thought Adjusters, Immanence, The Living Way

Summary by Kermit

Commentary after Review

Going beyond the immediate explanation of mutual interdependence and evolutionary reciprocity, to the intriguing finite philosophic question posed in the last section concerning the interplay of causality between the actualizing of the Supreme Being and the evolution of the grand universe, we must appreciate the real mystery in thinking less temporally about apparent linear bi-directional causal sequence.

Another question from last week: If perfecting spirit characterizes growth, what explains the horizontal growth cycle for the perfected post-ascension finaliters? We can think of perfecting spirit applying to the growth of the Supreme rather than the individual part.

We also asked about the differential duration of the post-ascension phase of the finaliters’ career between Grandfanda and so-called Omega Man, the last ascender to make the Corps of Finality prior to the power-personality synthesis completion of the Supreme Being. It is only from an immature viewpoint that such discrepancies are viewed as being cosmically unfair. These differences in destiny attainments must be seen in a more holistic context to be appreciated.

117:3 Significance of the Supreme to Universe Creatures

Our author begins to introduce the idea of the Supreme, the facet of Deity as being a third element, functional within finite along with the Almighty and the Mother. This is precisely how temporal thinking must be set aside, if that is possible, to conceptually accommodate the functioning of an element in advance of its temporal manifestation. We have become accustomed to recognizing the revelators’ narrative as pointing to the function of the Almighty (summative power-pattern), and the Mother (focalizing personal-purposive) in their superadditive interplay to eventually produce the Supreme Being. Here we see reference to the Supreme as a functional channel in the whole process of the spirit conquest of energy matter through the mediation of mind in time, under the direction of personality.

We are confronted with additional paradoxical phenomena when we consider that the descending Michael in his bestowal mission, was actually ascending in that he was going up from his existential source by gaining experiential nature, something the Universal Father is incapable of doing. And continuing the parallel, the Supreme thus adds the experiential nature to the existential Father.

What followed in our reading and discussion was an ingenious connection of Moses’ revelation of the Father in the burning bush wherein the Father was revealed as existential, “I AM that I AM”, with no connection to the experiential. It was through Michael’s bestowal that, as the Father incarnate he was able to say among other things, “I am the living way”. It was in the context of experiential Deity that the existential Father could be brought into contact with mortal man, not magically or mystically, but in the context of Mother Deity!

Listen again to the discussion of the logic in the use of the term Deity reality, in relation to personality and the Thought Adjuster.

Reflective religionists must have pondered how it is that mortal man is made in the image of God, when we are simultaneously instructed that God is spirit. At last we find clarification. Man as a volitional personality, in creative liaison with his impersonal Thought Adjuster and by virtue of the finite potentialities of the Supreme spawns the flowering of an immortal soul. And in the previously cited parallel do the Supreme Creators function in creative liaison with the impersonal spirit of the Paradise Trinity to give rise to the Supreme Being.

In parallel to the paradox of the Supreme contributing to his own growth, a mortal’s morontia soul once initiated begins to grow in and of itself. This amounts to something akin to the “end from the beginning” aspect of thinking about these things. The deeper we delve into these issues the more we must struggle to free ourselves from our time tethered thinking habits.

Using our old wineskin concepts of the Father we are wont to attribute all manner of cosmic activity to him. He is described as collaborating and cooperating with his divine coordinates and in trinitarian function in his role as initiator, but we are reminded of his solitary function in the ministry of the Thought Adjusters and their associated entities. And in this ministry we are further invited to go beyond thinking of the Thought Adjuster in fatherly terms, i.e. Father-fragments, but to consider them in terms of individuations of Deity, the Infinite Upholder. Continuing with suggestions of the parallels between the Thought Adjuster and the Paradise Trinity, the function of the Paradise Trinity relative to the finite (Trinity of Supremacy) leads us to the Mother, the Finite Upholder.

Pause to consider when you encounter the well-known phrase, “In Him we live, move and have our being.” From the finite standpoint we actually do so within the Mother, the immanence of the Supreme.

The section concludes, directing our attention to the destiny as finaliters of the absonite, alluding to the role of the Supreme and The Supreme Being in the elevation from sixth stage spirits to seventh stage spirits.

Notes by Brad

• You cannot read these notes, summaries, or listen to these episodes and gain unearned knowledge.
  • The best we can do is encourage you to pursue these concepts of the Mother.
  • You must, yourself, obtain an experiential relationship to this material.
  • It just won't "stick" otherwise.

• This distinction is vital... The more you reflect on it, the more the necessity for the existence of Mother Deity becomes.
  • A logical inevitability. It must exist. A focalization.
  • If there was only the upwelling power-pattern (Almighty), it would be the only fact in the universe.
  • Without the Mother, one needs magic to explain how parts become associated with one another. There's no such thing as magic.
  • You shouldn't have to be told to arbitrarily believe in this.
  • You encounter the Father's love, eternal and existential, in your inner life. But in the outer life, it's the Mother's love that engages others.

• Causality is a more holistic, non-linear fact than it appear down in time.
  • This is virtually imponderable for us, beyond being told it's the case.
  • Understandings of logic and causality lie deeper and are essentially a mystery for us... for now.

• A master pattern in the cosmos: the individual achieves something, then the collective achieves that something.
  • After growing vertically up and becoming a finaliter, you grow horizontally out into the whole grand universe.
  • But this second phase's growth is associated with the perfecting (collective) God the Supreme, with which you're ever more and more synchronized.
    • It's not individual growth (how could it be? You're individually a perfected spirit)
    • You are God the Supreme seeking in this second phase of horizontal growth.
  • You'll be in this phase for a long time! until the grand universe reaches light and life.
  • Seems as if those who ascend much later in this universe age will be shortchanged the horizontal growth phase!
    • Only quantitatively. Qualitatively, their vertical ascent will be much... "denser," for so much more will have been completed in the grand universe by then.

• Everyone has their part to play in supremacy
  • Some undertake "stationary" ministry in a perfecting universe.
    • Mighty Messengers stop growing after their vertical ascent, and minister in a stationary kind of way.
    • A Planetary Prince's corporeal staff set aside their Thought Adjusters and for long eons stop their upward ascent while ministering to a primitive sphere.
    • Seraphim and Material Sons and Daughters wait for a long, long time before becoming an ascending individual.
  • Some, like us, start at the very bottom and rise to high heights.
  • Others come into existence high already and remain stationary.
  • Etc. It's a whole spectrum.
  • All this experience must come together to complete the Supreme.
  • This experiential "summing" is very non-linear. We aren't all on the same marathon toward the same goalpost.

• What facets of Deity function down here in time?
  • The Almighty. Sure, this is the summation we speak of often in this arc.
  • The Mother. Definitely. Spoken of often as well.
  • The Supreme. Not a mere abstraction, or summation of the preceding two.
    • Although the Supreme Being stands transcendently above time, its reflection casts down into time as the Supreme.
    • A top-down unity influence from within time. A very subtle influence.
    • Yes. Within time.
    • The Supreme is ubiquitous in time (ubiquitous, not omnipresent)
    • The end from the beginning: the context in which the grand universe unfolds.
    • This is an added complexity to our simple "Almighty + Mother = the Supreme" model of understanding to this point.
  • The Father, quoted saying "I am that I am" to Moses, can hardly exist down in time--this is a purely existential statement.
    • An existential personal-purposive like this could hardly minister to us.
    • Try to drag the Father down into time and you drift toward "the colossal error of Pantheism."
    • So how is it brought down to us, then? The Mother.
  • Jesus said "I am the living way," but more precisely the way is The Mother. Not Jesus magically moving us along our way.
    • The Mother is the way. When Jesus brings the existential love of the Father to us, down in time, it becomes the experiential love of the Mother.
    • Jesus embodies this way because he has traversed the full vertical extent of the universe; he experientially walked the whole way.
    • Michael descended in one sense, but in another sense he ascended.

• These papers challenge us to think in more sophisticated ways, as adults of God, not children of God.
  • Man is "a volitional personality," and God the Father is the volitional absolute.
    • Fundamentally THIS is our "image of God" we're made in.
    • "But I'm made in the image of God because I have a Thought Adjuster!"
    • Well sure, but that's simplistic. They're trying to eliminate magic from our thinking.
  • Though the looking glass of these papers...
    • Our soul is in the image of God the Supreme, not God the Father (this author reports this was explained but he did not understand it)
  • You can never access the existential core of the Thought Adjuster.
    • The Father (initiator) initiates the Adjuster's existential core, but then its whole experiential life begins.
    • The Thought Adjuster plays a motherly role to us (not a fatherly one!) by "reaching down from the spiritual to the morontial soul levels" in a downwelling Mother way.
    • Once the father initiates our soul, it begins to grow "in an of itself," much like the Supreme in reality does.
    • As with the macro, so with the micro. Our growth mirrors the growth of the Supreme. The universe is patterned.
  • Time is an appearance.
    • The Supreme is not waiting to be born in a simplistic linear sense.
    • In parallel, the adjutant self helps the soul to form, but then (especially at higher psychic circles) the soul helps the adjutant self to grow. More reciprocity.
    • The Supreme is the end from the beginning. And in a very small way, the fact of you is the end from the beginning, too.

• We live in a universe where everything ascends (even Jesus/Michael), except for one fact: The Universal Father.
  • The Universal Father's purpose is to be that one unmoving center point. The initiator.
  • Experientially speaking, we ascenders someday will transcend the Universal Father.
  • Talk about an infinite amount of humility he presents to us!

• "I am the living way" and "this distinction is vital" concerning the Mother—this is not a coincidence.
  • Although you cannot point to or poke the Mother in the outer life, you can realize this in your mind. In this sense, the Mother has real substance.
  • This is insight, as opposed to sight.
  • Insight serves us well; someday insight can take our minds beyond the finite, into the absonite.
    • (Creator beings must control this, for their inner lives can manifest in the outer life, and this universe age isn't ready for absonity yet!)
  • Without the way the evolutionary process would fumble around in the dark.
    • The Supreme is a catalyzer, a subtle end-from-the-beginning influence, that shows the way forward.

• God the Mother is the God of evolution.
  • The role of the Mother can be disturbing, even to a long-time student of the 5th ER, once it sinks in.
  • "This isn't what I was thinking for 50 years!" Yes. This is not low-hanging fruit.
  • Instead of "in Him we live and move and have our behind," the immanence of the Supreme is where this takes place.
    • Paul was quoting Epimenides, an ancient Greek, who was writing about Zeus.
    • So Paul evolved it from Zeus to God the Father. Now we're taking it the rest of the way.
    • "In her we live and move and have our being."

• What is "Deity reality?" Is that a contradiction?
  • No. It's an object in reality that is present, in reality, solely because there is Deity on "the other side" (in the Deity perspective) backing it.
  • Example: The Son (a facet of Deity) manifests as a Deity reality, in reality, as the Eternal Son.
    • Which appears to be a pure spirit fact.
  • This is not merely some well-composed divinity (Deity-like) object. There's literal Deity stuff on the other side, associated with it.
  • But personality (despite being a deified level of reality) is not backed by Deity directly.
    • Why? It's been fragmented.