Episode:Experiential Deity—The Supreme Being (Part 1)

From Symmetry of Soul


The Father is man’s highest Deity concept of God, but God is much, much more than a Father. Man must think in a mortal universe frame, but that does not mean that he cannot envision other and higher frames within which thought can take place. With God the Father, sonship is the great relationship. With God the Supreme, achievement is the prerequisite to status—one must do something as well as be something.

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Keywords: Urantia, Experiential, Existential, Finite, Supreme

Summary by Kermit

Commentary after Review

Before launching into the new arc on experiential Deity, we shared some reflections from the previous seven month study, Jesus Faces Death. Some of the valuable takeaways cited were an enhanced appreciation of traditionally unrecognized more complex aspects of the main characters of the story including Simon Peter, Pilate, David Zebedee, Judas, the Roman Centurion and others, as seen in terms relevant to us, today.

Considering the characterization of the Master as having nothing in his heart resembling social antagonism we were reminded of the distinction between the unavoidable reaction of animal-origin creatures as ourselves to dislike individuals and circumstances in our environment, and the damaging, dangerous, and disrupting consequences to self of personal identification with dislike, elevating it to the level of hatred. All of which points to the Master’s call to self-mastery. Remember one of our maxims, we cannot cause growth, but we can supply favorable conditions and we will be grown by experiential Deity, unless we use our gifts of existential Deity (personality) to thwart such growth.

Striving for a correct understanding of experiential Deity is a cardinal challenge of the 5th ER presents and our next journey on SoS. Man’s religious thought has been framed in the idea of the nature of the Universal Father as being existential. How then do we conceive of existential Deity in time?

Paper 115: The Supreme Being

We spent about one hour with the shortest preface in the entire revelation attempting to find a proper conceptual onramp to truthfully engaging the revelation’s treatment of experiential Deity. Much of the confusion we encounter in trying to fathom the experiential realm stems from man’s preoccupation with the foundations of existence and erroneously trying to shoehorn our notions of the existential into a temporal context. Much of the enhancement of our religious philosophy gleaned from the previous arc was attained through expanding the borders of our frame of reference. What we are called to do in this endeavor is to find a different reference point and different reference frame in which to explore experiential Deity.

We noted that the Supreme Being and the Universal Father have always been thought of as synonyms. And why not? As finite beings our concept of existential is merely a negation of the experiential. For example the word infinity merely means not finity or not finite! Direct understanding of the existential realm must await our attainment of very much higher levels of universe status. We will need to move beyond linear thought and mere extrapolation of the finite.

We must consider the significance of the designations God the Father and God the Supreme in light of the term God referring to a facet of Deity which is personalized. And further consider the facets of Deity called the Father and the Supreme.

Picking up from our previous arc which concluded with a reiteration of Jesus’ gospel of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of his sons, we begin this study from the existential foundation of our sonship as partaking in a measure of the Father’s existential nature (personality). Upon the existential son nucleus, beingness, we build doingness above.

A caller inquired about the implications of existential and experiential realms with respect to love. We are setting aside such religious considerations as love. This is to be a philosophic journey. The teachings of love and service made manifest in the life of the Master (4th ER) are taken as a given as we pursue the challenge of the 5th ER wherein bad things happen to good people.

115:1.1-1.2 Relativity of Concept Frames

We have previously alluded to concept frames in our discussion. Mind inherently forms concept frames which compensate for our partial, incomplete, and evolving intellects, enabling us to form rational thought patterns and think logically. Indispensable to rational intellectual operations these frames are ALWAYS erroneous (false) in some degree. This is patently demonstrated in man’s long history of failure in his attempts to construct a true metaphysics. For the purposes of our introductory efforts we take rational to be that which is reasoned, and logical as that which is correctly reasoned in conformity with a specific concept frame. Note, with these terms rational and logical we are not referring to “reason” and “logic” discussions presented along with “faith” as found in the so-called religion papers 101, 102, and 103.

And while our humanly created concept frames are never true, revealed concept frames the likes of which we find in the 5th ER are true, but only relatively so. So it is that we must work to find and utilize universe concept frames which are ever more free of error. The quest for higher more truthful frames will characterize our long universe ascent.

Notes by Brad

  • How to read Papers 115-119
    • Yes, Papers 115-119, not just Papers 115-117.
      • Can't properly understand "The Supreme" (115-117) without seeing from Experiential Deity perspective (115-119)
    • Beware affirmation of your preexisting worldview.
      • Cursory reading will notice passage seemingly affirming what you've heard before.
      • Sure. You glaze over all the "jibberish" because it barely even seems to be English.
    • Instead, slow down and study what you've skipped over.
    • Be patient. These papers take their time laying out their case.
      • And it's not a linear case like the (relatively) linear Papers 1-5.
      • Slowly let the components enter your mind. Then, eventually seek synthesis.
    • The Supreme Being and God the Supreme are not synonyms.


  • Traditional & Authoritative Concept Frames
    • Existential Deity
      • Culture mostly sees God as a purely existential being: God the Father.
      • Unfortunate repercussions. For example, you semi-consciously might not understand growth and favorable conditions properly.
      • That said, it's a valid perspective: God the Father is outside of time. He loves you absolutely, not in time. He doesn't know your temporal life.
    • The Ghost-Cult Framework: confused to say the least.
      • aka man's awkward attempt to drag existential deity into the experiential domain.
      • aka what most religionists have always done.
      • It's very old and very bottom-up: dreamland --> ghostland --> spiritland. Back when it was just a religion of matter, not even yet a religion of mind.
      • You've probably grown up stuck in this messy frame.
      • Symptom: believing you're in debt to God.
      • Symptom: paradoxes like the Book of Genesis portraying God as timeless, yet "regretting" he made mankind.
      • Reflective thinkers sensed experiential/existential (God of Transcendence/God of Immanence). But stuck in this old framework, they couldn't carry those ideas forward truthfully.
    • The 5th ER reveals a proper presentation of another regime: experiential deity


  • Seeking an extraordinarily different concept frame
    • To see what we've always seen, but anew.
    • Enlarging the frame is not enough
    • Need a very different vantage point—reciprocal in many ways—from past ways of thinking about God and reality
      • We've been trained to believe "no truth is possible if I rotate 180 degrees."
      • Even on SoS we speak often of people being "180 degrees wrong; wholly erroneous."
      • Dual spiritism (1,000,000 years old) warns about grave danger of taking the perspective of the black ooze/The Dark Side.
      • Key: rotating 180 degrees in a plane that is transcendent of traditional dichotomies.
    • Full depth of these 5 papers is extraordinarily removed from our understanding.
    • Humility will be helpful here.


  • You don't directly know infinity or absonity.
    • Finite beings, at best, can conceive of "maximum finity" and then extrapolate from that an infinite distance.
      • Even mathematical "infinity" is inherently linear, but the supremacy and infinity are not linear.
      • Even "infinite" just means "totally completely not finite." We don't even understand it enough to coin a better word.
      • The Supreme Being is not just a sum of the finite. Not "The Uber-finite Being".
    • Most people don't even do this extrapolation past maximum finity.
      • That's why "God the Supreme" and "The Universal Father" effectively are synonyms for most people.
      • Well, if we properly gain an understanding of supremacy, for something stable on which to build on.
    • Finding the Universal Father
      • In the latter stages of the ascension career, our mind might genuinely recognize the existential Universal Father (at least the soles of his feet). Can't do it now, you have no real existential aspect yet.
      • "I want to find him." "But you're in time." "Yeah, is that a problem?" "Uh, yes. He's not in time."
    • But hope is not lost. Higher concept frames
      • Indirectly we can envision the existential.
      • Meanwhile, a better and better direct concept of the experiential is always possible for us.


  • Deity has facets
    • The Father.
      • It's existential deity. It has an innate statis-ness to it.
      • When this facet is personalized it is "God the Father"
      • You are existentially related to God the Father: an existential son-nucleus (your personality) initiated by an existential Father.
      • This is your foundational being-ness. "He is. Now you are."
      • It's what gives you value in the universe.
      • Many see this as the end (finding God the Father). But here let's take it as a beginning.
    • The Supreme.
      • It's experiential deity. It has an innate activeness to it.
      • When this facet is personalized, it is "God the Supreme."
      • This is your do-ingness, which is built on your foundational being-ness.
      • Your do-ingness is build atop your being-ness. It's not secondary to it, it's built on it.
      • But remember: your being-ness gives you value, not your doing-ness (that would theology's "works righteousness")


  • Weltanschauung! A way of looking at the universe.
    • Ours always are partial. As in, "the intellect of a part, not the intellect of a whole."
    • Ours are incomplete. As in, "does not yet innately embody the essence of the whole."
      • Grace required (for now) to have any comprehension of the whole. Someday far off you will innately embody the whole.
    • Ours are evolutionary. Our mortal intellect inescapably can only see temporal appearances
      • We naturally have sight, which sees appearances. Insight goes beyond appearances, to reality, and is unnatural.
    • Quasi-synonyms: viewpoints, frames, framework, perspectives, worldview, concept frame, universe frame.
      • Yet, weltanschauung (c/o Immanuel Kant) is a fine word because it has a wholeness flavor to it that has no direct English translation.
    • Mind develops "such universe frames" on its own. The degree to which you cannot do this well, is the degree to which that concept frame is erroneous.
      • Our attempts at metaphysics helped prove this to us.
    • But keep hope! A proper, true concept frame can be revealed!
      • It's not easy, though. You'll have to escape your erroneous concept frame to get the 5th ER's one.


  • Rational = reasoned (synonyms, basically. Just different word evolution from Latin)
  • Logical = correctly reasoned thought within a concept frame. Conforms to the concept frame.
    • If the concept frame is your own making, it is false logic.
    • True logic required a true concept frame. And that requires revelation.
    • Note: logical and logic are not synonyms. Avoid this higher notion of logic for now (e.g., as in reason, logic, faith).


  • Even a true concept frame is only relatively true.
    • How? I thought there were "the truths of eternity?" Because it depends on which triplet you're thinking of:
    • Beauty, truth, goodness. Existential truth. Truths of eternity. The superadditive consequence of beauty and goodness.
      • Children of God actually can understand this well.
    • Fact, truth, goodness. Experiential truth, because it is related to facts.
      • Adults of God can explore this territory. mostly unexplored.
      • This is not a black and white religious issue. Truth and falsehood. This is a humble philosophic quest into a gray (but still tangible) area.
      • Relative truth is not error. It is relatively true.


  • Remember: we're taking God the Father as a foundation to all of this. We seek to build on top of the existential God the Father.
    • By grace, we can envision higher concept frames.
    • Yes, The Supreme Father is above the Universal Father in this concept frame. Contrary to popular conception.
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