Paper 116 Overview: The Almighty Supreme

This paper explores how a clearer understanding of the evolving nature of God in time and space could resolve many apparent injustices and inequalities in the universe. The imperfections of our world, unlike the perfection of Havona, reflect the work of finite, evolving creators rather than absolute Deity. The Supreme Being is growing through experience, just as creation is, embodying the unification of personality and power across evolving universes. This evolutionary journey includes the mind, which continues to develop endlessly as the Supreme integrates the many functions of the grand universe.

God the Sevenfold bridges Paradise perfection with finite experience through the work of Creator Sons, Ancients of Days, Master Spirits, and others who progressively reveal Deity. Through their efforts, and the mind circuits stemming from the Infinite Spirit, the Almighty Supreme gradually becomes the unifying Deity of the evolving cosmos. Paradise Deity participates directly in this process through bestowal missions and by indwelling mortals with Thought Adjusters. The evolving Supreme relies on both Creators and creatures to unify energy, mind, and spirit through personality decisions. This effort toward divine integration and experiential unity finds its culmination in the living organism of the grand universe, where all striving is woven into the fabric of the growing Supreme Being.

The recognition that God functions through finite, evolving creators would fundamentally transform religious understanding of cosmic injustice and inequality. If mortals acknowledged that their immediate supervisors, while divine, are also finite beings, and that the God of time and space is an evolving, non-absolute Deity, the inconsistencies of temporal inequalities would cease to be profound religious paradoxes. This realization would prevent the misuse of religious faith to justify social complacency among the fortunate while merely encouraging stoic resignation among those suffering from social deprivation. The logical conclusion from observing the perfection of Havona is that it was created by a perfect, infinite Creator, but the same reason demands that the imperfection and turmoil of Urantia suggest creation and oversight by sub-absolute, pre-infinite, and imperfect Creators.

Experiential growth defines the relationship between God and the evolving universes, manifesting as a partnership between Creator and creature. This growth characterizes the grand universe, distinguishing it from the perfect, non-growing central universe of Havona, which exists eternally like the Paradise Deities who are its source. The Almighty Supreme embodies this principle of growth as a living, evolving Deity of both power and personality whose domain, the grand universe, is likewise a developing realm of expanding power and personality. While destined for perfection, the Supreme's present experience encompasses elements of growth and incomplete status, functioning primarily in the central universe as a spirit personality, secondarily in the grand universe as God the Almighty (a personality of power), and possessing a tertiary latent function in the master universe. Some believe this third development will reveal itself when the superuniverses achieve light and life, with the Supreme becoming the sovereign of the grand universe while expanding in power as the "superalmighty" of the outer universes, possibly involving a third level of Deity manifestation.

The experience of every evolving creature personality constitutes an essential phase in the experience of the Almighty Supreme, contributing directly to his growth and development. When intelligent beings subjugate physical segments of the superuniverses, they participate in the Almighty Supreme's growing control over the material realm. The creative synthesis of power and personality embodies the creative urge of Supreme Mind and forms the essence of evolutionary growth toward unity in the Supreme Being. This unification of the power and personality attributes within Supremacy functions through Supreme Mind and will ultimately result in one unified and personal Deity, not merely a loosely coordinated association of divine attributes. When the Almighty Supreme reaches completion, there will no longer be separate aspects; no Almighty apart from the Supreme, no Supreme apart from the Almighty.

During the evolutionary ages, the physical power potential of the Supreme resides temporarily in the Seven Supreme Power Directors, while his mind potential reposes in the Seven Master Spirits. The Infinite Mind expresses through the Infinite Spirit, the cosmic mind operates through the Seven Master Spirits, and the Supreme Mind progressively actualizes through the coordination of the grand universe in functional association with God the Sevenfold. The cosmic mind functions differently across the seven superuniverses but achieves coordination in the Supreme Being through an unknown associative technique. The Almighty overcontrol of the grand universe is not exclusively physical and spiritual. In the superuniverses, there are phenomena of the Supreme that are both intellectual and spiritual in nature. Despite our limited understanding of the Supreme Mind, we know that unlike physical growth (which can reach completion) and spirit (which can achieve perfection), mind never ceases to progress; it represents the experiential technique of endless advancement. The Supreme embodies experiential Deity and therefore will never achieve completion of mind attainment.

The appearance of the Almighty's universe power presence emerges simultaneously with the manifestation of the high creators and controllers of the evolutionary superuniverses on the cosmic stage. God the Supreme derives his spirit and personality attributes from the Paradise Trinity, but achieves power actualization through the creative activities of the Creator Sons, the Ancients of Days, and the Master Spirits. Their collective actions constitute the source of his growing power as the almighty sovereign to and within the seven superuniverses, forming a bridge between Paradise perfection and evolutionary creations. This relationship between the Supreme and the Sevenfold provides the pathway through which the love of the Universal Father flows outward to all creation, and through which finite creatures pass inward in their quest of the Father.

Unqualified Paradise Deity remains incomprehensible to evolving time-space creatures, who require origins, relativities, and destinies to understand cosmic relationships and divine values. Concepts such as eternity and infinity signify a level of deity reality that transcends mortal comprehension. To make itself accessible, Paradise Deity attenuates and qualifies its extra-Paradise manifestations of divinity, bringing forth the Supreme Creators and their associates who carry the light of life progressively farther from Paradise until it finds beautiful expression in the lives of bestowal Sons on evolutionary worlds. This hierarchical manifestation, known as God the Sevenfold, is encountered by mortal beings in ascending order: Creator Sons and Creative Spirits, Ancients of Days, Seven Master Spirits, Supreme Being, Conjoint Actor, Eternal Son, and Universal Father. The first three levels constitute the Supreme Creators, while the last three are the Paradise Deities. The Supreme Being intervenes as the experiential spirit personalization of the Paradise Trinity and as the experiential focus of the evolutionary almighty power of the creator children of the Paradise Deities, representing the maximum revelation of Deity to the seven superuniverses in the present universe age.

The Paradise Deities function throughout the grand universe directly through their gravity circuits and through various agencies and manifestations that extend their influence. A principal manifestation occurs through mind focalizations of the Third Source and Center, spanning from Creative Spirits in local universes through Reflective Spirits in the superuniverses to the Master Spirits in the grand universe. These mind circuits constitute the cosmic arena of creature choice, serving as the vital link connecting matter and spirit. The mind bestowal from the Third Source and Center unifies the spirit person of God the Supreme with the experiential power of the evolutionary Almighty, enabling the integration of spirit and energy through personality expression.

The bestowal incarnations of the Eternal Son and the Paradise Sons represent another critical function of Paradise Deity, unifying the divine nature of Creators with the evolving nature of creatures. The Supreme Being embodies both creator and creature qualities, as demonstrated when bestowal Sons augment their divine natures with genuine creature natures through living mortal lives on evolutionary worlds. When divinity becomes like humanity, the possibility emerges for humanity to become divine. Additionally, the indwelling fragments of the Universal Father, such as the Thought Adjusters in human beings, unite evolving creatures with God on Paradise. These Mystery Monitors function for humans as the Paradise Trinity does for the Supreme Being: as absolute foundations upon which freewill choice can evolve divine reality. Through these three manifestations—mind unification, bestowal ministry, and divine indwelling—the Paradise Deities participate actively in the evolutions of time culminating in the emergence of the Supreme personality.

The unity and coherence of the Supreme Whole depend entirely on the progressive unification of its constituent finite parts. The actualization of the Supreme results from, and simultaneously produces, these unifications of supremacy: the manifold creators, creatures, intelligences, and energies of the universes. During the developmental stages of the Supreme's sovereignty, his almighty power relies on the divinity acts of God the Sevenfold, with a particularly close relationship existing between the Supreme Being and the Conjoint Actor together with the Seven Master Spirits. The Infinite Spirit functions in ways that compensate for the incompletion of evolutionary Deity and maintains an especially close relationship with the Supreme, a connection shared in varying measure by all the Master Spirits, particularly Master Spirit Number Seven who speaks for the Supreme and maintains personal contact with him.

The local universes serve as the true laboratories where mind experiments, galactic adventures, divinity development, and personality progression are tested and explored. These evolutionary environments, when cosmically totaled, constitute the actual foundation upon which the Supreme achieves deity evolution through experience. In these cosmic workshops, even the Creators themselves undergo evolution: the Creative Spirit develops from a living power focus to the divine personality of a Universe Mother Spirit, while the Creator Son evolves from the nature of existential Paradise divinity to the experiential nature of supreme sovereignty. Through their bestowals on evolutionary worlds, the Magisterial Sons acquire natures that express Paradise divinity unified with the highest spiritual values of material human nature. When bestowal Sons reveal new paths for humans to find God, they illuminate the everlasting highways of progression leading through the Supreme to the Universal Father. The local universes provide both the starting point for personalities farthest from God, who can therefore experience the greatest spiritual ascent, and the deepest experience for descending personalities, who achieve insights as meaningful to them as the Paradise ascent is to evolving creatures. Mortal humanity, though seemingly humble, appears necessary to the full functioning of God the Sevenfold as it culminates in the actualization of the Supreme.

God the Sevenfold encompasses not only the creators but also the controllers of the grand universe, comprising a comprehensive spectrum of divine expression across the finite realm. These sevenfold controllers include: the Master Physical Controllers, the Supreme Power Centers, the Supreme Power Directors, the Almighty Supreme, the God of Action (Infinite Spirit), the Isle of Paradise, and the Source of Paradise (Universal Father). These seven groups function inseparably from God the Sevenfold and constitute the physical-control level of this Deity association, working in parallel with the creative and spiritual forces to establish cosmic equilibrium and progress. The bifurcation of energy and spirit, originating from the conjoint presence of the Eternal Son and Paradise Isle, manifested in the superuniverse sense when the Seven Master Spirits unitedly created the Seven Supreme Power Directors, differentiating the spiritual circuits of the Master Spirits from the physical activities of power director supervision, with cosmic mind appearing as the coordinating factor between matter and spirit.

The Almighty Supreme evolves as the overcontroller of the physical power of the grand universe. In the present universe age, this physical power potential appears centered in the Seven Supreme Power Directors, who operate through the fixed locations of power centers and the mobile presences of physical controllers. The time universes remain imperfect by design, as their destiny involves the struggle for perfection on intellectual, spiritual, and physical levels. The settlement of the seven superuniverses in light and life presupposes their attainment of physical stability, and the final achievement of material equilibrium will signify the completion of the Almighty's physical control evolution. In the early universe-building phases, even the Paradise Creators focus primarily on material equilibrium, as evidenced by Creator Sons who exhibit little-understood attributes of material control and do not leave their capital planets until the gross equilibrium of their local universes has been established. All energy ultimately responds to mind, and the physical controllers, children of the mind God who activates Paradise pattern, devote their intelligence unremittingly to achieving material control over energy relationships and mass motions. The total evolution of the grand universe involves the personality unification of the energy-controlling mind with the spirit-coordinated intellect, culminating in the full appearance of the almighty power of the Supreme.

In the evolutionary superuniverses, energy-matter maintains dominance in all domains except personality, where spirit struggles for mastery through the mediating influence of mind. The evolutionary goal of these universes is the subjugation of energy-matter by mind, the coordination of mind with spirit, and the achievement of these transformations through the creative and unifying presence of personality. In relation to personality, physical systems become subordinate, mind systems coordinate, and spirit systems directive. This union of power and personality manifests on deity levels as the Supreme, but the actual evolution of spirit dominance depends entirely on the freewill decisions of both Creators and creatures throughout the grand universe, representing a progressive achievement rather than an imposed condition.

On absolute levels, energy and spirit exist in perfect unity. However, as they extend outward from Paradise into the space-time universes, these two realities diverge progressively until they become markedly different in the local universes, requiring mind to interrelate them. Energy responds to the directional influence of controller personalities, demonstrating its inherent responsiveness to mind action. Mass exhibits stabilization through these same controlling entities, revealing its responsiveness to the order-producing presence of mind. Spirit in volitional personality can strive through mind for mastery over energy-matter, indicating the potential unity underlying all finite creation. In Paradise and Havona, matter and spirit naturally achieve harmony, but in the seven superuniverses, the extensive divergence between cosmic energy and divine spirit creates greater experiential potential for mind to harmonize and eventually unify physical patterns with spiritual purposes. This condition presents a wide arena where evolutionary experience becomes available to creatures and Creators alike, including Supreme Deity itself. All participants in this cosmic drama, from mortal humans to the Supreme Being, personally strive for achievement and participate in the unfolding destiny of the finite cosmos.

The grand universe functions as a magnificent and responsive living organism, transcending mere physical grandeur, spiritual sublimity, or intellectual magnitude. Actual life pulsates throughout the mechanism of the vast cosmos, with its physical reality symbolizing the perceivable reality of the Almighty Supreme. This material universe is interpenetrated by intelligence circuits comparable to the neural network of the human body, and permeated by energy lanes that activate material creation like the circulatory system energizes human physiology. The cosmos possesses coordinating centers of magnificent overcontrol analogous to the delicate chemical-control system of human physiology, establishing a profound parallelism between macrocosm and microcosm. Just as mortals depend on solar energy for life maintenance, the grand universe relies on the unfailing energies emanating from nether Paradise to sustain the material activities and cosmic motions of space.

Mind has been bestowed upon mortals for self-consciousness of identity and personality, while Supreme Mind has been given to the totality of the finite cosmos, allowing the emerging personality of the cosmos to strive for mastery over energy-matter. Mortal humans respond to spirit guidance just as the grand universe responds to the spirit-gravity of the Eternal Son, which establishes a universal supermaterial cohesion of eternal spiritual values. Human beings can achieve an everlasting self-identification with universe reality through fusion with their indwelling Thought Adjusters, while the Supreme Being depends eternally on the absolute stability of Original Deity, the Paradise Trinity. The human urge for Paradise perfection creates a genuine divinity tension in the living cosmos, resolved through the evolution of an immortal soul, while the collective striving of all creatures and Creators for God-attainment builds a profound cosmic tension that finds resolution only in the sublime synthesis of almighty power with the spirit person of the evolving Supreme Being.