Paper 1 Overview: The Universal Father

The Universal Father stands as the God of all creation, the First Source and Center of all things and beings. He functions sequentially as creator, controller, and infinite upholder of the entire cosmos. The evolutionary development of the concept of one God in place of many gods enabled mortal humans to comprehend God simultaneously as divine creator and infinite controller. The prophet articulated this truth when declaring: "You, God, are alone; there is none beside you. You have created the heaven and the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts; you preserve and control them." Through the Sons of God, the universes were made, with the Creator covering himself with light and stretching out the heavens like a curtain.

God created the myriad planetary systems to be inhabited eventually by diverse intelligent creatures capable of knowing God, receiving divine affection, and returning that love. The enlightened worlds throughout the universe acknowledge and worship the Universal Father as both eternal maker and infinite upholder of creation. The will creatures across countless universes have embarked on the long Paradise journey toward attaining God the Father. Their transcendent goal remains finding the eternal God, comprehending divine nature, and recognizing the Universal Father. From the Universal Father has come the supreme mandate: "Be you perfect, even as I am perfect." Paradise messengers have carried this divine directive through the ages and across the universes, even to Earth's human races. This magnificent universal injunction represents both the first duty and highest ambition of all struggling creatures created by the God of perfection, and it establishes the certain destiny of eternal spiritual progress.

The Universal Father is the God of all creation, the First Source and Center of all things and beings. He can be understood sequentially as creator, controller, and infinite upholder of all reality. The concept of one God replacing the notion of many gods enabled human beings to comprehend God simultaneously as divine creator and infinite controller. The ancient prophet captured this truth when declaring that God alone created the heavens with all their hosts, preserving and controlling them through the Sons of God who made the universes, with the Creator covering himself in light and stretching the heavens like a curtain.

The multitude of planetary systems were designed to be eventually inhabited by many different types of intelligent creatures who could know God, receive his divine affection, and return that love. The universe of universes represents God's work and the dwelling place of his diverse creatures, establishing the worlds to be inhabited rather than remaining void. The enlightened worlds across creation recognize and worship the Universal Father as eternal maker and infinite upholder. Will creatures throughout the universes have embarked on the long, fascinating Paradise journey, the eternal adventure of attaining God the Father. Their transcendent goal involves finding the eternal God, comprehending divine nature, and recognizing the Universal Father. God-knowing creatures possess one supreme ambition: to become, in their respective spheres, like God in his Paradise perfection of personality and righteous supremacy.

Throughout the universes, God the Father is known by various names, with those designating him as the First Source and Universe Center being most frequently encountered. The First Father is known by different names in different universes and in different sectors of the same universe, with these names largely dependent on each creature's conception of the Creator. The First Source and Universe Center has never revealed himself by name, only by nature. If we believe ourselves to be his children, it becomes natural that we eventually call him Father, though this represents our chosen name arising from recognition of our personal relationship with the First Source and Center.

The Universal Father never imposes arbitrary recognition, formal worship, or slavish service upon the intelligent will creatures of the universes. The evolutionary inhabitants of time-space worlds must recognize, love, and voluntarily worship him from their hearts. The Creator refuses to coerce or compel the submission of the spiritual free wills of his material creatures. The affectionate dedication of human will to doing the Father's will constitutes humanity's choicest gift to God and indeed represents the only possible gift of true value to the Paradise Father. In God, humans live, move, and have their being; they can give nothing to God except choosing to abide by the Father's will. Such decisions, made by the intelligent will creatures of the universes, constitute the reality of true worship that satisfies the love-dominated nature of the Creator Father. Once a person becomes truly God-conscious after discovering the majestic Creator and experiencing the indwelling divine controller, they will find an appropriate name for the Universal Father that expresses their concept of the First Great Source and Center.

God exists as primal reality in the spirit world, functions as the source of truth in mind spheres, and overshadows all throughout the material realms. To all created intelligences, God represents a personality, while to the universe of universes, he stands as the First Source and Center of eternal reality. The Universal Father manifests as universal spirit, eternal truth, infinite reality, and father personality. The eternal God infinitely exceeds mere idealized reality or personalized universe concepts. God transcends humanity's supreme desire objectified and cannot be reduced to natural law personified. The Universal Father supersedes traditional concepts of supreme values, representing a saving person and loving Father to all who enjoy spiritual peace on earth and seek personality survival beyond death.

The existence of God demonstrates itself in human experience through the indwelling divine presence, the spirit Monitor sent from Paradise to inhabit the mortal mind. This divine Adjuster's presence reveals itself through three experiential phenomena: the intellectual capacity for knowing God (God-consciousness), the spiritual urge to find God (God-seeking), and the personality craving to be like God (the wholehearted desire to fulfill the Father's will). While God's existence cannot be proven through scientific experiment or logical deduction, the true concept of divine reality remains reasonable to logic, plausible to philosophy, essential to religion, and indispensable to any hope of personality survival. Those who know God have experienced his presence firsthand, with God-knowing mortals possessing the only positive proof of the living God that one human can offer another. God's existence transcends all possibility of demonstration except through the contact between the God-consciousness of the human mind and the God-presence of the Thought Adjuster indwelling the mortal intellect as a free gift from the Universal Father.

In theory, we may conceptualize God as Creator, specifically as the personal creator of Paradise and the central universe of perfection. However, the universes of time and space are created and organized by the Paradise corps of Creator Sons. The Universal Father does not personally create the local universe of Nebadon where Earth exists; rather, this universe represents the creation of his Son Michael. Although the Father does not personally create evolutionary universes, he controls many of their universal relationships and certain manifestations of physical, mindal, and spiritual energies. The Father personally creates Paradise and, together with the Eternal Son, creates all other personal universe Creators. As physical controller in the material universe of universes, the First Source and Center functions through the pattern of eternal Paradise, exercising cosmic overcontrol equally in the central universe and throughout all creation.

"God is spirit," existing as a universal spiritual presence. The Universal Father stands as an infinite spiritual reality, "the sovereign, eternal, immortal, invisible, and only true God." Though humans are "the offspring of God," they should not imagine the Father resembles them in form and physique despite being created "in his image." Spirit beings possess reality despite their invisibility to human eyes and lack of flesh and blood. The ancient seer observed: "Lo, he goes by me, and I see him not; he passes on also, but I perceive him not." Humans constantly observe God's works, perceive material evidence of his majestic conduct, but rarely glimpse visible manifestations of his divinity or delegated spirit of human indwelling.

The Universal Father does not hide himself from humans with materialistic handicaps and limited spiritual endowments. Rather, "You cannot see my face, for no mortal can see me and live." No material being could behold the spirit God and preserve mortal existence. The glory and spiritual brilliance of divine personality presence transcends approach by lower spirit beings or material personalities. The Father's spiritual luminosity represents "light which no mortal man can approach; which no material creature has seen or can see." However, seeing God with physical eyes is unnecessary when discerning him through the faith-vision of spiritualized mind. The spirit nature of the Universal Father is fully shared with his coexistent self, the Eternal Son of Paradise, and both Father and Son share the universal and eternal spirit unreservedly with their conjoint personality coordinate, the Infinite Spirit.

In the inner experience of humans, mind connects to matter. Such material-linked minds cannot survive mortal death. Survival technique requires adjustments of human will and transformations in the mortal mind whereby a God-conscious intellect gradually becomes spirit taught and eventually spirit led. This evolution of the human mind from material association to spirit union results in transmutation of potentially spiritual phases of the mortal mind into the morontia realities of the immortal soul. Mortal mind subservient to matter faces increasing materiality and eventual personality extinction, while mind yielded to spirit achieves increasing spirituality and ultimate oneness with the guiding divine spirit, attaining survival and eternity of personality existence. The Divine Counselor presenting this information states: "I come forth from the Eternal, and I have repeatedly returned to the presence of the Universal Father. I know of the actuality and personality of the First Source and Center, the Eternal and Universal Father. I know that, while the great God is absolute, eternal, and infinite, he is also good, divine, and gracious."

The infinity of God's perfection eternally constitutes him as mystery. The greatest unfathomable mystery concerns the divine indwelling of mortal minds, with the Universal Father's sojourn with time creatures representing the most profound universe mystery. The physical bodies of mortals are "the temples of God." Despite Sovereign Creator Sons drawing near their inhabited worlds and "drawing all men to themselves," standing at the door of consciousness "knocking" and delighting to enter opened hearts, mortal beings possess something from God himself dwelling within them, making their bodies divine temples.

When the earthly journey concludes, when the material form returns to the dust, the indwelling "Spirit shall return to God who gave it." Within each moral being resides a fragment of God, a part of divinity not yet possessed by right but designedly intended to become one with those who survive mortal existence. Humanity constantly confronts this mystery of God, increasingly nonplused by the unfolding endless panorama of his infinite goodness, endless mercy, matchless wisdom, and superb character. The divine mystery consists in the inherent difference between the finite and infinite, the temporal and eternal, the time-space creature and the Universal Creator, the material and spiritual, human imperfection and Paradise Deity perfection. The God of universal love unfailingly manifests himself to every creature to the fullness of their capacity to spiritually grasp divine truth, beauty, and goodness.

To every spirit being and mortal creature throughout the universe of universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his gracious divine self that can be discerned or comprehended by such beings. Divine presence experienced by any universe child remains limited only by the creature's capacity to receive and discern spiritual realities of the supermaterial world. As a reality in human spiritual experience, God does not constitute a mystery. However, attempts to explain spirit world realities to physical minds creates mystery so subtle and profound that only the faith-grasp of God-knowing mortals can achieve the philosophical miracle of the finite recognizing the Infinite, the evolving mortals of material worlds discerning the eternal God.

The magnitude of God and his infinity should not obscure or eclipse his personality. "He who planned the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, shall he not see?" The Universal Father represents the pinnacle of divine personality, both the origin and destiny of personality throughout creation. God exists truly as a personality, though his infinity places him forever beyond full comprehension by material and finite beings. God transcends personality as understood by the human mind, existing far beyond concepts of superpersonality. Nevertheless, discussing such incomprehensible concepts of divine personality with material creatures remains futile when their highest conception of reality centers on personality. The material creature's highest possible concept of the Universal Creator finds expression in spiritual ideals of exalted divine personality.

God does not hide from his creatures; he remains unapproachable to many beings only because he "dwells in a light which no material creature can approach." The immensity and grandeur of divine personality exceeds the grasp of unperfected evolutionary mortal minds. He "measures the waters in the hollow of his hand, measures a universe with the span of his hand. It is he who sits on the circle of the earth, who stretches out the heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a universe to dwell in." Though material mortals cannot physically see God, they should rejoice in the assurance of his personhood, accepting by faith the truth that the Universal Father loved the world enough to provide for the eternal spiritual progression of its lowly inhabitants, and that he "delights in his children." God lacks none of the superhuman and divine attributes constituting a perfect, eternal, loving, and infinite Creator personality.

In local creations (excepting the personnel of the superuniverses), God has no personal or residential manifestation apart from the Paradise Creator Sons, who father inhabited worlds and govern local universes. With perfect faith, creatures would recognize that seeing a Creator Son means seeing the Universal Father. When seeking the Father, one need not ask or expect to see other than the Son. Mortal humans cannot see God until achieving complete spirit transformation and actually attaining Paradise. The natures of Paradise Creator Sons do not encompass all unqualified potentials of the universal absoluteness of the First Great Source and Center, yet the Universal Father is divinely present in the Creator Sons. These Paradise Sons of the Michael order represent perfect personalities, even the pattern for all local universe personality from the Bright and Morning Star down to the lowest human creature of progressing animal evolution. Without God and his central person, no personality would exist throughout the vast universe of universes.

Human personality represents the time-space image-shadow cast by a divine Creator personality. No reality can be adequately comprehended by examining its shadow; shadows must be interpreted through the true substance. To science, God appears as cause; to philosophy, as idea; to religion, as person, specifically the loving heavenly Father. Man's insufficient concept of the Universal Father's personality improves only through spiritual progress in the universe, becoming truly adequate only when pilgrims of time and space finally achieve the divine embrace of the living God on Paradise. Never lose sight of the contrasting viewpoints concerning personality as conceived by God and humans; humans view personality looking from the finite toward the infinite, while God perceives from the infinite toward the finite.

Man possesses the lowest type of personality, while God embodies the highest, including supreme, ultimate, and absolute qualities. Improved concepts of divine personality patiently awaited the appearance of enhanced ideas of human personality, especially through the revelatory Urantian bestowal life of Michael, the Creator Son. The prepersonal divine spirit indwelling the mortal mind carries, through its very presence, valid proof of its existence, but the concept of divine personality can be grasped only through the spiritual insight of genuine personal religious experience. Any person, human or divine, may be known and comprehended apart from external reactions or material presence. Some moral affinity and spiritual harmony remains essential for friendship between persons; a loving personality can hardly reveal himself to a loveless person. Approaching knowledge of divine personality requires complete consecration of all personality endowments; halfhearted, partial devotion proves unavailing.

The more completely humans understand themselves and appreciate the personality values of their fellows, the more they crave knowing the Original Personality, and the more earnestly such God-knowing individuals strive to emulate the Original Personality. You can argue over opinions about God, but experience with him transcends human controversy and intellectual logic. The God-knowing person describes spiritual experiences not to convince unbelievers but for believers' edification and mutual satisfaction. To assume the universe can be known and is intelligible means assuming it is mind-made and personality-managed. Man's mind can only perceive mind phenomena in other minds, whether human or superhuman. If human personality can experience the universe, a divine mind and actual personality must exist somewhere within that universe. God is spirit-spirit personality; man also exists as spirit-potential spirit personality. Jesus of Nazareth achieved full realization of this spirit personality potential in human experience, making his life of fulfilling the Father's will mankind's most real and ideal revelation of God's personality.

When Jesus spoke of "the living God," he referred to a personal Deity, the Father in heaven. The concept of divine personality facilitates fellowship, promotes intelligent worship, and encourages refreshing trustfulness. Interactions can occur between nonpersonal things, but not fellowship. The father-son fellowship relationship between God and humans requires both participants to be persons. Only personalities can commune with each other, though this personal communion may be facilitated by impersonal entities like the Thought Adjuster. Man does not achieve union with God as a water drop finds unity with the ocean. Instead, humans attain divine union through progressive reciprocal spiritual communion, personality intercourse with the personal God, and increasingly acquiring divine nature through wholehearted, intelligent conformity to divine will. Such sublime relationships can exist only between personalities.

The concept of truth might exist apart from personality, and the concept of beauty may exist without personality, but divine goodness becomes understandable only in relation to personality. Only persons can love and be loved. Even beauty and truth would lose connection to survival hope if not attributes of a personal God, a loving Father. We cannot fully comprehend how God remains primal, changeless, all-powerful, and perfect while surrounded by an ever-changing, apparently law-limited, evolving universe of relative imperfections. However, we experience this truth in our personal existence, maintaining identity of personality and unity of will despite constant changes in ourselves and our environment. Ultimate universe reality cannot be grasped through mathematics, logic, or philosophy, but only through personal experience in progressive conformity to the divine will of a personal God. Neither science, philosophy, nor theology can validate God's personality; only personal experience of the heavenly Father's faith sons can achieve actual spiritual realization of divine personality.

The higher concepts of universe personality imply identity, self-consciousness, self-will, and possibility for self-revelation. These characteristics further suggest fellowship with other equal personalities, as exists in the Paradise Deities' personality associations, where absolute unity creates such perfect oneness that divinity becomes known through indivisibility. "The Lord God is one." This indivisibility of personality does not prevent God from bestowing his spirit to live in human hearts, just as a human father's personality indivisibility does not prevent reproduction of sons and daughters. The concept of indivisibility combined with unity implies transcendence of both time and space through Deity's Ultimacy; therefore, neither space nor time can be absolute or infinite. The First Source and Center represents the infinity that unqualifiedly transcends all mind, matter, and spirit.