(Urantia as a life-experiment station in a cosmic bureaucracy)
The universe is a gigantic bureaucracy with offices everywhere and hierarchies of every kind and plans and purposes and conspiracy and danger, and destiny, and failure, and success and reward. Planet Earth, whose real name is Urantia, is a life-experiment station on which higher nonhuman beings are developing newer forms of life-expression.
Coexistent with the differentiation between Father and Son was the appearance of the Infinite Spirit and the Central Universe of Havona, which spins around Paradise (see Figure 1, frontispiece).
(The soul, the Eternal Son, and the Trinity’s structure)
The soul is neither material (as the body) nor spiritual (as the Thought Adjuster), but lives in an intermediate realm that The Urantia Book calls the morontial level.
The Urantia Book calls the Creator Son who made our own Local Universe Michael because he belongs to the Order of Michaels, another name for the Paradise Corps of Creator Sons. (By a false etymology, the name Michael is said to be Hebrew for “Who is like God?” that is, no one.) The Michael of this Local Universe, registered under the name of Nebadon, was the very being who through an exceptional process incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth in Palestine in 7 BC, for complex reasons that we will later discuss.
The Gospel of John begins with the famous words “In the beginning was the Word [= Greek logos, something ordered, with shape] and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” That is true of the Eternal Son. The Universal Father never functions personally as a creator except in conjunction with the Eternal Son.
As the Father is love, the Son is mercy. Mercy is love in action.
Although omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent the Eternal Son does not function personally in the physical domains, nor in the realm of mind. The Eternal Son derives personality from the Father but does not bestow personality, the prerogative of the Universal Father.
Nor can the Eternal Son fragmentize himself, as does the Father in the issuing of the Thought Adjusters.
Spiritual gravity, of which the Eternal Son is the center, operates outside of time and space, hence is undiminished in transmission. Spiritual gravity is real, and not a figure of speech; and it pulls harder in response to spiritual achievement. As a mortal becomes a spiritual being, it becomes possible by submitting to this gravity to know the Son.
The spirit-gravity circuit is how genuine prayer from the human heart goes to God. The circuit is rather like the human nervous system, a network directing an impulse to the right office. There are no reception centers for selfish prayer for material profit, however, which is a waste of time. Nor are fancy words of any use in effective prayer—it’s the thought that counts.
(Why suffering and uncertainty are spiritually necessary)
THE ADVANTAGE OF EVOLUTIONARY LIFE The pain and uncertainty of existence does not diminish God’s overcontrol, but makes possible the evolution of qualities with high spiritual values: Courage is only possible in the face of challenge and adversity. Altruism—selfless behavior—is only possible where there are social differences. Hope, the grandeur of trust, is possible only in the middle of uncertainties.
Faith is only possible where one must believe more than one can know. Love of truth requires a world where falsehood is possible. Idealism, a longing for higher values, can only exist where there is room for improvement. Loyalty requires the possibility of betrayal and deceit. Devotion to duty is a high quality only where default is possible. To be unselfish, one must know the temptations of the self. To understand pleasure, you must live in a world where its opposite is a clear alternative.
Humans cannot contact the Eternal Son as they do the Father through the Thought Adjuster, but the Son comes toward them through a series of downsteppings in these bestowals.
A Creator Son is not just the offspring of God, he is God.
(The Thought Adjuster, free will, and the ship of the soul)
The mind is like a ship. The Adjuster is the pilot, and the human will is captain. If the captain takes the pilot’s good advice, the ship will sail into the harbor of eternal life. If not, the ship may strike against the rocks of deliberate defiance of divine will and so perish beneath the waves.
The Ancients of Days supervise the Superuniverse courts and play an important role in the story of The Urantia Book.
(The local universe hierarchy: Satania, Jerusem, and Nebadon)
Each System is administered from an architectural headquarters sphere by a System Sovereign. Our own System is Satania (Lucifer was its Sovereign) and its headquarters sphere is Jerusem, surrounded by seven groups of satellites on which mortals who survive death are rematerialized in morontia forms (Jerusem is the heaven of popular lore).
The System of Satania is on the periphery of our Local Universe of Nebadon as Nebadon is on the periphery of the Superuniverse of Orvonton.
(Paradise, ultimatons, and the material basis of the cosmos)
The basis of the universe is material, as matter is a form of energy that proceeds from and is under the control of the Universal Father. Life, however, is spirit. The ultimaton, the first measurable form of energy, is not yet described by Urantia scientists (but presumably has something to do with particle physics). The ultimaton is indestructible, unlike the atom, and somehow has the timeless Isle of Paradise as its nucleus! The ultimaton is not responsive to gravity. It is the building block of the electron, made up of no fewer than 100 ultimatons.
MORE ON PARADISE Having said all that, we need to remember that Paradise is not really part of the universe, even of the eternal Central Universe of Havona (in spite of our drawing in Figure 1). It is the source and goal of all spirit personalities, including ourselves. It is unique, without parallel, incomprehensible.
These are the three sacred circuits of Paradise. In the first band or circuit are the seven secret spheres of the Universal Father. In the second circuit are the luminous seven spheres of the Son. In the third circuit are the immense seven spheres of the Conjoint Actor, which serve as the executive headquarters of the Seven Master Spirits, each one of which controls a Superuniverse from foci on the periphery of Paradise.
The sixth sphere in the circuit of the Father is called Seraphington and hides the secrets of seraphic transport, the ordinary means of interplanetary travel whereby seraphim, an order of angels, wrap their spirit forms around nonmaterial personalities to carry them immense distances through space. We will later have more to say about the seraphim and other orders of angels, which originate from the Third Source and Center.
To reach and be schooled in the absonite Central Universe of Havona is man’s destiny. Graduating from the billion worlds of Havona and graduating to Paradise, beings of mortal origin become finaliters destined to pursue an undisclosed adventure in exploring the infinity of the Universal Father.
Jerusem, the architectural headquarters of the Local System of Satania, is encircled by seven architectural planets, which are each in turn encircled by seven spheres. The seven spheres encircling the innermost sphere are the first morontia residence of mortals,
where you go if you survive death. These seven subsidiary spheres are the “seven heavens” of popular lore.
(Adam, Eve, and the morontia afterlife on Jerusem’s spheres)
A Material Son and Daughter came to this planet about thirty-eight thousand years ago, remembered as Adam and Eve (the first humans go back about one million years). “Adam” is the name of the original Material Son, who never leaves Satania, and his male offspring, when dispatched to the evolutionary worlds, ordinarily bear his name.
Adjuster-fusion is a kind of Son-seizure during a life in the flesh whereby the individual is removed from among the living, glorified, and appears immediately on Salvington in the presence of the Creator Son. The Hebrew patriarch Enoch was the first human on this planet to fuse with his Adjuster while in the flesh. Such Adjuster-fused mortals are afterward clothed in morontia bodies in the resurrection halls of the higher morontia mansion worlds, thence to pursue their careers toward Paradise.
Their offspring constitute usually the eighth race on a planet, the Adamic or violet race.
God, if they choose, and like humans aspire to become members of the Corps of Finality on Paradise. The fate of the Adam and Eve of this planet took a rather special course, as we will see.
The archangelic commanders take their orders from Gabriel, the local Bright and Morning Star (more later) and Michael’s chief executive on the Local Universe capital of Salvington, or from Gabriel’s agents.
The limit of velocity for most nonenseraphimed beings is 186,280 miles per second, although the Midway Creatures and certain others can attain double velocity—372,560
An enseraphimed being cannot exceed the velocity of 558,840 Urantia miles in one second of our time.
Solitary Messengers can go in very short order, nearly independent of time and space.
A Creator Son is not bound by time, but he is conditioned by space; he cannot personally be in two places at the same time. The Creative Spirit, by contrast, is not bound by space and is present everywhere in a Local Universe at once, but she is limited by time. Working together, they are independent of both time and space.
Gabriel is unique in this Local Universe. Belonging to the class of Bright and Morning Stars, he is the first product of the creative union of the Creator Son and the Creative Spirit.
The Universe Mother Spirit is the water of life, refreshing those who receive it, fulfilling them independently of their material circumstance.
In fact the natural and physical urges and demands of the body are not in conflict with even the highest spiritual achievement, except in the minds of the ignorant, foolish, and intolerant; those who in faith live in the spirit know this. There is no need to fear or be confused, for the Spirit of Truth always makes clear that “this is the way.”
When two personalities from different Local Universes meet, they communicate in the tongue of Uversa; if, however, one hails from another Superuniverse, they must use a translator. In the Central Universe of Havona there is little need of a language because communication takes place in some direct way.
The universe broadcasts go forth to all inhabited worlds but are denied to worlds such as Urantia that are under quarantine.
In the vision of John the Revelator he saw that “out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices” (Revelation 4:5)—the universe broadcasts to the Local System.
At last the pilgrim will reach Paradise as a perfected spirit. The ascender has found God and will be mustered into the Corps of the Finality, restricted to Father-fused beings. As finaliters they are assigned tasks in the far-flung creation (such as tending schools on the first transitional world surrounding Jerusem).
All members of the corps are fused with a fragment from the Father. It is a completely self-governing order, answerable to the Trinity alone.
The Material Sons are from eight to ten feet in height and glow with a violet light.
such a corps remonstrated with the Adam and Eve of Urantia when they violated the rules of their mission, remembered in the biblical
(The Lucifer revolt and Urantia’s quarantine)
BACKGROUND TO THE REVOLT In the universe, life moves in two directions, downward from Paradise into the realms of time and space; and upwards, from the realms of time and space toward Paradise.
Little was known of Lucifer on Urantia because he assigned his lieutenant, Satan, also a Lanonandek Son, to represent his case on this planet. The “devil” of popular lore is, however, Caligastia, once the Planetary Prince of Urantia, charged to oversee the orderly development of intelligent life here.
On Urantia the dragon (Greek for “snake”) symbolized the leaders Lucifer, Satan, and Caligastia.
Shortly before his death, Jesus referred to this when he said, “And I beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven” (Luke 10.18). The thirty-seven apostate planets of Satania, however, remain under quarantine.