Paper 7 Overview: Relation of the Eternal Son to the Universe

The Original Son is eternally engaged in the execution of the spiritual dimensions of the Universal Father's purpose as it progressively unfolds through the phenomena of the evolving universes. In his spiritual sovereignty, the Eternal Son maintains absolute control of the universal spirit-gravity circuit, which constitutes the unvarying foundation for all genuine spiritual realities. The Son's nature emulates the Father's self-distributive qualities, bestowing himself unstintingly upon his coordinate Sons and upon the Infinite Spirit, functioning as the eternal counterbalance to the Isle of Paradise—while Paradise upholds all material things, the Son upholds all spiritual realities.

The Eternal Son serves as the supreme revelation of the Father's spiritual nature and personality to the universe of universes. This revealing function operates through a hierarchical administration wherein the Son's presence becomes progressively personalized through the Paradise Sons in the local universes. For ascending mortals, the Eternal Son initially seems less approachable than a Creator Son such as Michael of Nebadon, but as these beings progress through the superuniverses and into Havona, they increasingly perceive the supernal presence of the Original Son. The Son's spiritual gravity constitutes the inherent secret of Paradise ascension for surviving human souls, drawing all genuine spirit values and truly spiritualized individuals toward the center of all things in an inexorable cosmic trajectory toward divinity realization.

The Original Son is perpetually engaged with the execution of the spiritual aspects of the Father's eternal purpose as it progressively manifests through the evolving universes with their diverse assemblages of living beings. While finite creatures cannot fully comprehend this eternal plan in its entirety, the Paradise Son undoubtedly possesses complete understanding of its nature and purpose. The Son mirrors the Father's self-bestowing nature, seeking to impart everything possible of himself upon his coordinate Sons and their subordinate Sons, sharing the Father's self-distributive essence through his unstinted bestowal upon the Infinite Spirit, their conjoint executive.

As the upholder of spirit realities, the Second Source and Center functions as the eternal counterpoise of the Isle of Paradise, which magnificently upholds all material things, thus revealing the First Source and Center simultaneously through the material beauty of Paradise's exquisite patterns and through the spiritual values embodied in the supernal personality of the Eternal Son. The Son serves as the actual upholder of the vast creation of spirit realities and beings, with the spirit world representing the habit and personal conduct of the Son himself. However, the Son does not bear personal responsibility for the conduct of all spirit personalities, as the will of personal creatures possesses relative freedom and thus determines the actions of such volitional beings, though regardless of freewill actions, the Son's eternal grasp of universal spiritual gravity control remains absolute.

All teachings regarding the immanence of God—his omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience—apply with equal validity to the Eternal Son within the spiritual domains. The pure and universal spirit gravity of all creation, this exclusively spiritual circuit, leads directly back to the person of the Second Source and Center on Paradise, who presides over the control and operation of that ever-present and unerring spiritual grasp of all true spirit values. Through this absolute spiritual sovereignty, the Eternal Son literally holds all spirit realities and spiritualized values in the hollow of his hand, exercising universal control over the spiritual dimensions of existence.

This gravity control of spiritual phenomena operates entirely independently of time and space constraints, rendering spirit energy undiminished in transmission without time delays or spatial diminution. Spirit gravity does not decrease according to the square of the distance as does physical gravity, nor is it retarded by the mass of material creation, owing to the absoluteness of the Son rather than to any antigravity intervention by the Third Source and Center. Spirit substances respond to the drawing power of spiritual gravity proportionate to their qualitative value or degree of spiritual nature, with spirit values and forces constituting authentic reality from the perspective of personality. The spirit-gravity circuit operates with unfailing dependability throughout the grand universe, enabling the measurement of spiritual gravity just as humans compute physical gravity, with spirit responses always corresponding to the degree of actuality or qualitative reality of spiritual values.

On Paradise, the presence and personal activity of the Original Son manifests as profound and absolute in the spiritual sense. As one traverses outward from Paradise through Havona and into the realms of the seven superuniverses, one detects progressively less direct personal activity of the Eternal Son. In the post-Havona universes, the presence of the Eternal Son becomes personalized through the Paradise Sons, conditioned by the experiential realities of the Supreme and Ultimate, and coordinated with the unlimited spirit potential of the Deity Absolute, representing a transformation from direct to indirect spiritual administration.

In the central universe, the personal activity of the Original Son becomes discernible in the exquisite spiritual harmony of the eternal creation, with Havona exhibiting such marvelous perfection that the spiritual status and energy states exist in perfect and perpetual balance. By contrast, in the superuniverses, the Son maintains not a personal presence but rather a superpersonal representation outside the personality circuit of the Universal Father, constituting finite spiritual manifestations that are neither absonite nor absolute. In the local universes, however, the Eternal Son manifests as personally present through the majestic corps of coordinate Creator Sons, with his all-pervading spiritual influence encountered in every phase of activities across all domains of the Ancients of Days, thereby extending his spiritual sovereignty through delegation and representation.

In the local universe ascent, mortals of time regard the Creator Son as the personal representative of the Eternal Son. As they commence the superuniverse training regime, these pilgrims of time increasingly detect the supernal presence of the Eternal Son's inspiring spirit, benefiting from its spiritual energization. Upon reaching Havona, ascenders become ever more conscious of the all-pervading loving embrace of the Original Son's spirit. Significantly, at no stage of the entire mortal ascension does the spirit of the Eternal Son indwell the mind or soul of the time pilgrim, yet his beneficence remains ever near and continuously concerned with the spiritual welfare and security of the advancing children of time.

The spiritual-gravity pull of the Eternal Son constitutes the inherent secret underlying the Paradise ascension of surviving human souls. All genuine spirit values and authentically spiritualized individuals remain held within the unfailing grasp of the Son's spiritual gravity, with the mortal mind progressively becoming less subject to material gravity and increasingly responsive to the inward pulling urge of spirit gravity throughout its evolutionary journey. The spirit-gravity circuit serves as the fundamental channel for transmitting genuine prayers from human consciousness directly to Deity consciousness, with the true spiritual content of petitions being simultaneously transmitted to all divine personalities concerned with their fulfillment. In practical religious experience, it becomes immaterial whether one visualizes the Creator Son of the local universe or the Eternal Son at the center of all things when addressing supplications, as the spiritual value reaches its divine destination regardless.

The Eternal Son maintains an everlasting liaison with the Father in the successful prosecution of the divine plan of progress—the universal blueprint for creation, evolution, ascension, and perfection of will creatures. In divine faithfulness, the Son stands as the Father's eternal equal in formulating and executing this gigantic attainment plan for advancing material beings from the temporal condition to the perfection of eternity. With the cooperative assistance of the Infinite Spirit, the Father and Son engage in the associative implementation of their divine purpose, demonstrating perfect unity in this cosmic enterprise of spiritual elevation for the ascendant souls of space.

This divine perfection attainment plan encompasses three uniquely correlated enterprises of universal adventure: first, the Plan of Progressive Attainment, the Universal Father's evolutionary ascension scheme unreservedly accepted by the Eternal Son, involving the Father's bestowal of Thought Adjusters and endowment of personality prerogatives; second, the Bestowal Plan, the Eternal Son's Father-revelation enterprise through his coordinate Sons, who sometimes incarnate to personalize and make tangible the Father's love and the Son's mercy to creatures throughout the universes; and third, the Plan of Mercy Ministry, the Infinite Spirit's tremendous enterprise essential to the practical implementation of both the attainment and bestowal undertakings. As the personal trustee and divine custodian of the Father's universal ascension plan, the Eternal Son works in perfect harmony with the other Deities in the work of creation, control, evolution, revelation, and ministration—and when necessary, in restoration and rehabilitation.

The Eternal Son unreservedly joined with the Universal Father in broadcasting that tremendous injunction to all creation: "Be you perfect, even as your Father in Havona is perfect." This invitation-command has subsequently motivated all the survival plans and bestowal projects of the Eternal Son and his vast family of coordinate and associated Sons throughout the ages. Through these bestowals, the Sons of God have literally become "the way, the truth, and the life" for all evolutionary creatures on their spiritual journey toward divine perfection.

The Eternal Son cannot directly contact human beings as does the Father through the gift of prepersonal Thought Adjusters, but compensates for this limitation through a series of downstepping gradations of divine sonship until he can stand in man's presence and, occasionally, as man himself. The purely personal nature of the Eternal Son prevents fragmentation, as he can minister only as a spiritual influence or as a person, never as a fragmented entity. This contrasts with the Father-Adjuster participation in creature experience, but the Eternal Son overcomes this limitation through the bestowal technique—the secret of Sonarington—whereby Paradise Sons incarnate in the nature of the creatures themselves. The Son never directly comes to mortal man as the divine will or indwelling Thought Adjuster but did come to Urantia when the divine personality of his Son, Michael of Nebadon, incarnated in the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth, demonstrating how Paradise Sons share creature experiences by actually becoming those creatures.

The pervasive ignorance concerning the multiple Sons of God creates significant confusion on Urantia, persisting despite scriptural references to divine conclaves where "the Sons of God proclaimed joy, and all of the Morning Stars sang together." The Eternal Son functions as the personal source of the adorable attributes of mercy and service that so abundantly characterize all orders of the descending Sons of God throughout creation. The Eternal Son unfailingly transmits the divine nature, if not all the infinity of attributes, to the Paradise Sons who reveal his divine character to the universe of universes.

The Original and Eternal Son represents the offspring-person of the Universal Father's "first" completed infinite thought. When the Father and Son jointly project a new, original, identical, unique, and absolute personal thought, that creative idea becomes perfectly personalized as a new Creator Son. These Creator Sons potentially equal God the Father and God the Son in spirit nature, divine wisdom, and coordinate creative power as they organize local universes throughout time and space. Similarly, the Magisterial Sons emerge from the personalization of the Son and Spirit, earning through creature incarnation the right to serve as survival judges in time-space creations. The Father, Son, and Spirit also unite to personalize the versatile Trinity Teacher Sons who function as supernal educators throughout the grand universe. Between the Original Mother Son and the hosts of Paradise Sons, there exists a direct and exclusive channel of communication inherent in the quality of spiritual kinship that unites them in near-absolute spiritual association, enabling instantaneous communication independent of time, though sometimes conditioned by space limitations.

The Eternal Son constitutes a complete, exclusive, universal, and final revelation of the spirit and personality of the Universal Father. All knowledge of and information concerning the Father must necessarily derive from the Eternal Son and his Paradise Sons, as the Son provides the divine revelation of the creator identity of the Universal Father. The perfect personality of the Son discloses the Father as the eternal and universal source of all meanings and values of the spiritual, the volitional, the purposeful, and the personal realms of reality.

The primal Son and his Sons engage in making a universal revelation of the spiritual and personal nature of the Father to all creation throughout all spheres of existence, from central universe to superuniverses, local universes, and individual planets. The Father approaches creature beings as a personality exclusively through the divine Sons of the Eternal Son, and creatures attain the Father by following the guiding influence of these divine Sons. During the progress of time pilgrims through Havona, they become capable of attaining the Son long before they achieve preparedness to discern the Father, as the Son's personality proves more easily approachable than the Universal Father's. For humans of material origin, understanding of the Eternal Son's character and merciful nature deepens through meditation on the revelation provided by the Creator Son who once lived on Urantia simultaneously as the Son of Man and the Son of God, making tangible the otherwise abstract spiritual qualities of deity.