4. THE MYSTERY OF GOD
The infinity of God's perfection is such that it eternally constitutes it a mystery. And the greatest of all the impenetrable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of divine residence in the minds of mortals. The way in which the Universal Father lives with the creatures of time is the deepest of all the mysteries of the universe; The divine presence in the mind of man is the mystery of the mysteries.
The physical body of mortals is "the temple of God . " Although the Sovereign Creator Sons come near the creatures of their inhabited worlds and "attract all men to them"; although they "stand by the door" of consciousness "and knock" and fill them with joy to enter into all those who "open the door of their heart"; although there is this intimate personal communion between the Creator Sons and their mortal creatures, however, mortal men have something of God Himself who currently dwells within them; and of which their bodies are temples.
When you have finished here, when your career has ended in its temporary form on earth, when your journey of tribulation in the flesh ends, when the dust that makes up the mortal tabernacle "return to the land from which it came"; then, it has been revealed, "the spirit" that dwells in you "will return to God who granted it." In each mortal being of this planet inhabits a fragment of God, an integral part of the divinity. It is not yours by right of possession, but it is intentionally conceived to become one with you if you survive mortal existence.
We are constantly confronted by this mystery of God; we are confused by the growing development of the endless panorama of the truth of his infinite goodness, his unlimited mercy, his incomparable wisdom and his extraordinary character.
The divine mystery consists in the inherent difference that exists between the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, the space-time creature and the Universal Creator, the material and the spiritual, the imperfection of man and the perfection of the Paradise Deity . The God of universal love is infallibly manifested to each of his creatures to the full capacity of that creature to spiritually apprehend the qualities of divine truth, beauty and goodness.
For every spiritual being and for every mortal creature in all spheres and in all the worlds of the universe of universes, the Universal Father reveals everything of his merciful and divine being that can be discerned or understood by these spirit beings and by such creatures deadly God shows no preference for people, spiritual or material. Only the creature's ability to receive and discern the spiritual actualities of the supermaterial world limits the divine presence that any child in the universe enjoys at any time.
As a reality in the human spiritual experience, God is not a mystery. But when attempts are made to clarify the realities of the spirit world for physical minds of material order, the mystery appears: mysteries so subtle and so deep that only the understanding of faith of the mortal who knows God can achieve the philosophical miracle of the recognition of the Infinite on the part of the finite, the discernment of the eternal God by the evolutionary mortals of the material worlds of time and space.
5. THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSAL FATHER
Do not let the magnitude of God, his infinity, obscure or eclipse his personality . «He who conceived the ear, will he not hear? He who formed the eye, will he not see? The Universal Father is the summit of the divine personality; He is the origin and destiny of the personality throughout all creation. God is infinite and personal; It is an infinite personality. The Father is truly a personality, although the infinity of his person places him forever beyond the reach of the full understanding of material and finite beings.
God is much more than a personality, just as the human mind understands the personality; he is even much more than any possible concept of a superpersonality. But it is totally futile to discuss these incomprehensible concepts of divine personality with the minds of material creatures whose maximum concept of the reality of being consists in the idea and ideal of personality. The highest possible concept of the Universal Creator to which the material creature has access is contained within the spiritual ideals of the exalted idea of the divine personality. Therefore, although you may know that God must be much more than the human concept of personality, you also know well that the Universal Father can in no way be anything less than an eternal, infinite, true, good and beautiful personality.
God does not hide from any of his creatures. It is inaccessible to so many orders of beings only because "it dwells in a light that no material creature can approach." The vastness and grandeur of the divine personality is beyond the reach of the unimpeded mind of evolutionary mortals. He «measures the waters with the hollow of his hand, measures a universe with the palm of his hand. He is the one who sits on the circle of the earth, who extends the heavens like a curtain and unfolds them as a universe to dwell. " Lift up your eyes, and see who created these things, who tells their worlds and everyone calls by their names"; and so it is true that "the invisible things of God are partially understood through the things done." Today, and as you are, you must discern the invisible Maker through his multiple and diverse creation, as well as through the revelation and ministry of his Sons and his numerous subordinates.
Although material mortals cannot see the person of God, they must rejoice in the assurance that he is a person; by faith accept the truth that describes that the Universal Father loved the world so much that he gave his humble inhabitants the possibility of eternal spiritual progress; that he likes his children. God does not lack any of those superhuman and divine attributes that constitute the perfect, eternal, loving and infinite personality of the Creator.
In local creations (except for the staff of the superuniverses) God has no personal or residential manifestations apart from the Paradise Creator Sons, who are the fathers of the inhabited worlds and the sovereigns of the local universes. If the creature's faith were perfect, he would surely know that when he had seen a Creator Son, he would have seen the Universal Father; in seeking the Father, he would not ask or expect to see but the Son . The mortal man simply cannot see God until he has achieved a complete spiritual transformation and truly attains Paradise.
The natures of the Paradise Creator Sons do not encompass all the unqualified potentialities of the universal absoluteness of the infinite nature of the First Great Source and Center, but the Universal Father is anyway divinely present in the Creator Sons . The Father and his Children are one. These Paradise Sons of Michael's order are perfect personalities, including the original model for all personalities of the local universe from the Bright Morning Star to the lowest human creatures of progressive animal evolution.
In the absence of God, and with the exception of his excellent and central person, there would be no personality throughout the vast universe of universes. God is personality.
Although God is an eternal power, a majestic presence, a transcendent ideal, and a glorious spirit, although it is all this and infinitely more, it is nevertheless truly and eternally a perfect personality of Creator, a person that he can `` know and be known '', that he can `` love and be loved '', someone who can show us friendship; while you can be known, just as other human beings have been known, as friends of God. He is a real spirit and a spiritual reality.
As we see the Universal Father reveal himself through his universe ; as we discern him dwelling in the myriads of his creatures; as we contemplate on the people of their Sovereign Children; as we continue to perceive his divine presence here and there, near and far, do not doubt or question his personality primacy. Notwithstanding all these vast distributions, he remains a true person and always maintains a personal connection with the countless hosts of his creatures scattered throughout the universe of universes.
The idea of the personality of the Universal Father is an expanded and more true concept of God that has reached mankind primarily through revelation. Reason, wisdom and religious experience, all of them deduce and imply the personality of God, but do not fully validate it. Even the resident Thought Adjuster is prepersonal. The truth and maturity of any religion is directly proportional to its concept of the infinite personality of God and its apprehension of the absolute unity of Deity. The idea of a personal Deity thus becomes the measure of religious maturity once religion has first formulated the concept of the unity of God.
The primitive religion had many personal gods, conceived in the image of man. The revelation affirms the validity of the concept of the personality of God, which is merely possible in the scientific postulate of a First Cause and is only provisionally suggested in the philosophical idea of Universal Unity. Only through a personality approach can a person begin to understand the unity of God. Denying the personality of the First Source and Center only allows the choice between two philosophical dilemmas: materialism or pantheism.
In the contemplation of the Deity, the concept of personality must be stripped of the idea of corporeality. A material body is not indispensable for the personality, neither in man nor in God. The error of corporeality is shown at both ends of human philosophy: in materialism, since man loses his body with death, he ceases to exist as a personality; in pantheism, since God has no body, he is not, therefore, a person. The superhuman type of progressive personality works in the union of mind and spirit.
Personality is not simply an attribute of God; rather, it represents the totality of the coordinated infinite nature and the unified divine will that is exhibited in eternity and universality of perfect expression. Personality, in the supreme sense, is the revelation of God to the universe of universes.
God, being eternal, universal, absolute, and infinite, does not grow in knowledge or increase in wisdom. God does not acquire experience, as the finite man might conjecture or understand, but he enjoys, within the domains of his own eternal personality, those continuous expansions of self-realization that are somewhat comparable and analogous to the acquisition of new experience by of the finite creatures of the evolutionary worlds.
The absolute perfection of the infinite God would cause him to suffer the tremendous limitations of the unqualified purpose of perfectness if it were not a fact that the Universal Father directly participates in the effort of the personality of every imperfect soul in the vast universe he seeks, with help divine, ascend to spiritually perfect worlds above. This progressive experience of every spirit being and every mortal creature through the universe of universes is part of the everlastingly expansive consciousness of the Father's Deity, which belongs to the endless divine circle of endless self-realization.
It is literally true: "in all your afflictions he grieves . " "In all your triumphs he triumphs in you and with you." His prepersonal divine spirit is a real part of you. Paradise Island responds to all physical metamorphoses of the universe of universes; the Eternal Son includes all the spiritual impulses of all creation; The Joint Actor encompasses every expression of the mind of the expanding cosmos. The Universal Father realizes in the fullness of the divine consciousness of the entire individual experience of the progressive struggles of expanding minds and the ascending spirits of every entity, being and personality of all the evolutionary creation of time and space. And all this is literally true, because "in him we all live and move and have our being."
AUTHOR: Urantia Book: THE MYSTERY OF GOD
