The Urantia Book

117. God the Supreme

6. The Quest for the Supreme

^117.6.1 We seek the Supreme in the universes, but we find him not. “He is the within and the without of all things and beings, moving and quiescent. Unrecognizable in his mystery, though distant, yet is he near.” The Almighty Supreme is “the form of the yet unformed, the pattern of the yet uncreated.” The Supreme is your universe home, and when you find him, it will be like returning home. He is your experiential parent, and even as in the experience of human beings, so has he grown in the experience of divine parenthood. He knows you because he is creaturelike as well as creatorlike.

^117.6.2 If you truly desire to find God, you cannot help having born in your minds the consciousness of the Supreme. As God is your divine Father, so is the Supreme your divine Mother, in whom you are nurtured throughout your lives as universe creatures. “How universal is the Supreme - he is on all sides! The limitless things of creation depend on his presence for life, and none are refused.”

^117.6.3 What Michael is to Nebadon, the Supreme is to the finite cosmos; his Deity is the great avenue through which the love of the Father flows outward to all creation, and he is the great avenue through which finite creatures pass inward in their quest of the Father, who is love. Even Thought Adjusters are related to him; in original nature and divinity they are like the Father, but when they experience the transactions of time in the universes of space, they become like the Supreme.

^117.6.4 The act of the creature's choosing to do the will of the Creator is a cosmic value and has a universe meaning which is immediately reacted to by some unrevealed but ubiquitous force of co-ordination, probably the functioning of the ever-enlarging action of the Supreme Being.

^117.6.5 The morontia soul of an evolving mortal is really the son of the Adjuster action of the Universal Father and the child of the cosmic reaction of the Supreme Being, the Universal Mother. The mother influence dominates the human personality throughout the local universe childhood of the growing soul. The influence of the Deity parents becomes more equal after the Adjuster fusion and during the superuniverse career, but when the creatures of time begin the traversal of the central universe of eternity, the Father nature becomes increasingly manifest, attaining its height of finite manifestation upon the recognition of the Universal Father and the admission into the Corps of the Finality.

^117.6.6 In and through the experience of finaliter attainment the experiential mother qualities of the ascending self become tremendously affected by contact and infusion with the spirit presence of the Eternal Son and the mind presence of the Infinite Spirit. Then, throughout the realms of finaliter activity in the grand universe, there appears a new awakening of the latent mother potential of the Supreme, a new realization of experiential meanings, and a new synthesis of experiential values of the entire ascension career. It appears that this realization of self will continue in the universe careers of the sixth-stage finaliters until the mother inheritance of the Supreme attains to finite synchrony with the Adjuster inheritance of the Father. This intriguing period of grand universe function represents the continuing adult career of the ascendant and perfected mortal.

^117.6.7 Upon the completion of the sixth stage of existence and the entrance upon the seventh and final stage of spirit status, there will probably ensue the advancing ages of enriching experience, ripening wisdom, and divinity realization. In the nature of the finaliter this will probably equal the completed attainment of the mind struggle for spirit self-realization, the completion of the co-ordination of the ascendant man-nature with the divine Adjuster-nature within the limits of finite possibilities. Such a magnificent universe self thus becomes the eternal finaliter son of the Paradise Father as well as the eternal universe child of the Mother Supreme, a universe self qualified to represent both the Father and Mother of universes and personalities in any activity or undertaking pertaining to the finite administration of created, creating, or evolving things and beings.

^117.6.8 All soul-evolving humans are literally the evolutionary sons of God the Father and God the Mother, the Supreme Being. But until such time as mortal man becomes soul-conscious of his divine heritage, this assurance of Deity kinship must be faith realized. Human life experience is the cosmic cocoon in which the universe endowments of the Supreme Being and the universe presence of the Universal Father (none of which are personalities) are evolving the morontia soul of time and the human-divine finaliter character of universe destiny and eternal service.

^117.6.9 Men all too often forget that God is the greatest experience in human existence. Other experiences are limited in their nature and content, but the experience of God has no limits save those of the creature's comprehension capacity, and this very experience is in itself capacity enlarging. When men search for God, they are searching for everything. When they find God, they have found everything. The search for God is the unstinted bestowal of love attended by amazing discoveries of new and greater love to be bestowed.

^117.6.10 All true love is from God, and man receives the divine affection as he himself bestows this love upon his fellows. Love is dynamic. It can never be captured; it is alive, free, thrilling, and always moving. Man can never take the love of the Father and imprison it within his heart. The Father's love can become real to mortal man only by passing through that man's personality as he in turn bestows this love upon his fellows. The great circuit of love is from the Father, through sons to brothers, and hence to the Supreme. The love of the Father appears in the mortal personality by the ministry of the indwelling Adjuster. Such a God-knowing son reveals this love to his universe brethren, and this fraternal affection is the essence of the love of the Supreme.

^117.6.11 There is no approach to the Supreme except through experience, and in the current epochs of creation there are only three avenues of creature approach to Supremacy:

^117.6.12 1. The Paradise Citizens descend from the eternal Isle through Havona, where they acquire capacity for Supremacy comprehension through observation of the Paradise-Havona reality differential and by exploratory discovery of the manifold activities of the Supreme Creator Personalities, ranging from the Master Spirits to the Creator Sons.

^117.6.13 2. The time-space ascenders coming up from the evolutionary universes of the Supreme Creators make close approach to the Supreme in the traversal of Havona as a preliminary to the augmenting appreciation of the unity of the Paradise Trinity.

^117.6.14 3. The Havona natives acquire a comprehension of the Supreme through contacts with descending pilgrims from Paradise and ascending pilgrims from the seven superuniverses. Havona natives are inherently in position to harmonize the essentially different viewpoints of the citizens of the eternal Isle and the citizens of the evolutionary universes.

^117.6.15 To evolutionary creatures there are seven great approaches to the Universal Father, and each of these Paradise ascensions passes through the divinity of one of the Seven Master Spirits; and each such approach is made possible by an enlargement of experience receptivity consequent upon the creature's having served in the superuniverse reflective of the nature of that Master Spirit. The sum total of these seven experiences constitutes the present-known limits of a creature's consciousness of the reality and actuality of God the Supreme.

^117.6.16 It is not only man's own limitations which prevent him from finding the finite God; it is also the incompletion of the universe; even the incompletion of all creatures - past, present, and future - makes the Supreme inaccessible. God the Father can be found by any individual who has attained the divine level of Godlikeness, but God the Supreme will never be personally discovered by any one creature until that far-distant time when, through the universal attainment of perfection, all creatures will simultaneously find him.

^117.6.17 Despite the fact that you cannot, in this universe age, personally find him as you can and will find the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, nevertheless, the Paradise ascent and subsequent universe career will gradually create in your consciousness the recognition of the universe presence and the cosmic action of the God of all experience. The fruits of the spirit are the substance of the Supreme as he is realizable in human experience.

^117.6.18 Man's sometime attainment of the Supreme is consequent upon his fusion with the spirit of Paradise Deity. With Urantians this spirit is the Adjuster presence of the Universal Father; and though the Mystery Monitor is from the Father and like the Father, we doubt that even such a divine gift can achieve the impossible task of revealing the nature of the infinite God to a finite creature. We suspect that what the Adjusters will reveal to future seventh-stage finaliters will be the divinity and nature of God the Supreme. And this revelation will be to a finite creature what the revelation of the Infinite would be to an absolute being.

^117.6.19 The Supreme is not infinite, but he probably embraces all of infinity that a finite creature can ever really comprehend. To understand more than the Supreme is to be more than finite!

^117.6.20 All experiential creations are interdependent in their realization of destiny. Only existential reality is self-contained and self-existent. Havona and the seven superuniverses require each other to achieve the maximum of finite attainment; likewise will they be sometime dependent on the future universes of outer space for finite transcendence.

^117.6.21 A human ascender can find the Father; God is existential and therefore real, irrespective of the status of experience in the total universe. But no single ascender will ever find the Supreme until all ascenders have reached that maximum universe maturity which qualifies them simultaneously to participate in this discovery.

^117.6.22 The Father is no respecter of persons; he treats each of his ascending sons as cosmic individuals. The Supreme likewise is no respecter of persons; he treats his experiential children as a single cosmic total.

^117.6.23 Man can discover the Father in his heart, but he will have to search for the Supreme in the hearts of all other men; and when all creatures perfectly reveal the love of the Supreme, then will he become a universe actuality to all creatures. And that is just another way of saying that the universes will be settled in light and life.

^117.6.24 The attainment of perfected self-realization by all personalities plus the attainment of perfected equilibrium throughout the universes equals the attainment of the Supreme and witnesses the liberation of all finite reality from the limitations of incomplete existence. Such an exhaustion of all finite potentials yields the completed attainment of the Supreme and may be otherwise defined as the completed evolutionary actualization of the Supreme Being himself.

^117.6.25 Men do not find the Supreme suddenly and spectacularly as an earthquake tears chasms into the rocks, but they find him slowly and patiently as a river quietly wears away the soil beneath.

^117.6.26 When you find the Father, you will find the great cause of your spiritual ascent in the universes; when you find the Supreme, you will discover the great result of your career of Paradise progression.

^117.6.27 But no God-knowing mortal can ever be lonely in his journey through the cosmos, for he knows that the Father walks beside him each step of the way, while the very way that he is traversing is the presence of the Supreme.

7. The Future of the Supreme

^117.7.1 The completed realization of all finite potentials equals the completion of the realization of all evolutionary experience. This suggests the final emergence of the Supreme as an almighty Deity presence in the universes. We believe that the Supreme, in this stage of development, will be as discretely personalized as is the Eternal Son, as concretely powerized as is the Isle of Paradise, as completely unified as is the Conjoint Actor, and all of this within the limitations of the finite possibilities of Supremacy at the culmination of the present universe age.

^117.7.2 While this is an entirely proper concept of the future of the Supreme, we would call attention to certain problems inherent in this concept:

^117.7.3 1. The Unqualified Supervisors of the Supreme could hardly be deitized at any stage prior to his completed evolution, and yet these same supervisors even now qualifiedly exercise the sovereignty of supremacy concerning the universes settled in light and life.

^117.7.4 2. The Supreme could hardly function in the Trinity Ultimate until he had attained complete actuality of universe status, and yet the Trinity Ultimate is even now a qualified reality, and you have been informed of the existence of the Qualified Vicegerents of the Ultimate.

^117.7.5 3. The Supreme is not completely real to universe creatures, but there are many reasons for deducing that he is quite real to the Sevenfold Deity, extending from the Universal Father on Paradise to the Creator Sons and the Creative Spirits of the local universes.

^117.7.6 It may be that on the upper limits of the finite, where time conjoins transcended time, there is some sort of blurring and blending of sequence. It may be that the Supreme is able to forecast his universe presence onto these supertime levels and then to a limited degree anticipate future evolution by reflecting this future forecast back to the created levels as the Immanence of the Projected Incomplete. Such phenomena may be observed wherever finite makes contact with superfinite, as in the experiences of human beings who are indwelt by Thought Adjusters that are veritable predictions of man's future universe attainments throughout all eternity.

^117.7.7 When mortal ascenders are admitted to the finaliter corps of Paradise, they take an oath to the Paradise Trinity, and in taking this oath of allegiance, they are thereby pledging eternal fidelity to God the Supreme, who is the Trinity as comprehended by all finite creature personalities. Subsequently, as the finaliter companies function throughout the evolving universes, they are solely amenable to the mandates of Paradise origin until the eventful times of the settling of local universes in light and life. As the new governmental organizations of these perfected creations begin to be reflective of the emerging sovereignty of the Supreme, we observe that the outlying finaliter companies then acknowledge the jurisdictional authority of such new governments. It appears that God the Supreme is evolving as the unifier of the evolutionary Corps of the Finality, but it is highly probable that the eternal destiny of these seven corps will be directed by the Supreme as a member of the Ultimate Trinity.

^117.7.8 The Supreme Being contains three superfinite possibilities for universe manifestation:

^117.7.9 1. Absonite collaboration in the first experiential Trinity.

^117.7.10 2. Coabsolute relationship in the second experiential Trinity.

^117.7.11 3. Coinfinite participation in the Trinity of Trinities, but we have no satisfactory concept as to what this really means.

^117.7.12 This is one of the generally accepted hypotheses of the future of the Supreme, but there are also many speculations concerning his relations to the present grand universe subsequent to its attainment of the status of light and life.

^117.7.13 The present goal of the superuniverses is to become, as they are and within their potentials, perfect, even as is Havona. This perfection pertains to physical and spiritual attainment, even to administrative, governmental, and fraternal development. It is believed that, in the ages to come, the possibilities for disharmony, maladjustment, and misadaptation will be eventually exhausted in the superuniverses. The energy circuits will be in perfect balance and in complete subjugation to mind, while spirit, in the presence of personality, will have achieved the dominance of mind.

^117.7.14 It is conjectured that at this far-distant time the spirit person of the Supreme and attained power of the Almighty will have achieved co-ordinate development, and that both, as unified in and by the Supreme Mind, will factualize as the Supreme Being, a completed actuality in the universes - an actuality which will be observable by all creature intelligences, reacted to by all created energies, co-ordinated in all spiritual entities, and experienced by all universe personalities.

^117.7.15 This concept implies the actual sovereignty of the Supreme in the grand universe. It is altogether likely that the present Trinity administrators will continue as his vicegerents, but we believe that the present demarcations between the seven superuniverses will gradually disappear, and that the entire grand universe will function as a perfected whole.

^117.7.16 It is possible that the Supreme may then be personally resident on Uversa, the headquarters of Orvonton, from which he will direct the administration of the time creations, but this is really only a conjecture. Certainly, though, the personality of the Supreme Being will be definitely contactable at some specific locality, although the ubiquity of his Deity presence will probably continue to permeate the universe of universes. What the relation of the superuniverse citizens of that age will be to the Supreme we do not know, but it may be something like the present relationship between the Havona natives and the Paradise Trinity.

^117.7.17 The perfected grand universe of those future days will be vastly different from what it is at present. Gone will be the thrilling adventures of the organization of the galaxies of space, the planting of life on the uncertain worlds of time, and the evolving of harmony out of chaos, beauty out of potentials, truth out of meanings, and goodness out of values. The time universes will have achieved the fulfillment of finite destiny! And perhaps for a space there will be rest, relaxation from the agelong struggle for evolutionary perfection. But not for long! Certainly, surely, and inexorably the enigma of the emerging Deity of God the Ultimate will challenge these perfected citizens of the settled universes just as their struggling evolutionary forebears were once challenged by the quest for God the Supreme. The curtain of cosmic destiny will draw back to reveal the transcendent grandeur of the alluring absonite quest for the attainment of the Universal Father on those new and higher levels revealed in the ultimate of creature experience.

^117.7.18 [Sponsored by a Mighty Messenger temporarily sojourning on Urantia.]