Foreword

0:0.1In the minds of the mor­tals of Uran­tia—that be­ing the name of your world—there ex­ists great con­fu­sion re­spect­ing the mean­ing of such terms as God, di­vin­ity, and de­ity. Hu­man be­ings are still more con­fused and un­cer­tain about the re­la­tion­ships of the di­vine per­son­al­i­ties des­ig­nated by these nu­mer­ous ap­pel­la­tions. Be­cause of this con­cep­tual pov­erty as­so­ci­ated with so much ide­a­tional con­fu­sion, I have been di­rected to for­mu­late this in­tro­duc­tory state­ment in ex­pla­na­tion of the mean­ings which should be at­tached to cer­tain word sym­bols as they may be here­inafter used in those pa­pers which the Or­von­ton corps of truth re­veal­ers have been au­tho­rized to trans­late into the En­glish lan­guage of Uran­tia.

0:0.2It is ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult to pre­sent en­larged con­cepts and ad­vanced truth, in our en­deavor to ex­pand cos­mic con­scious­ness and en­hance spir­i­tual per­cep­tion, when we are re­stricted to the use of a cir­cum­scribed lan­guage of the realm. But our man­date ad­mon­ishes us to make ev­ery ef­fort to con­vey our mean­ings by us­ing the word sym­bols of the En­glish tongue. We have been in­structed to in­tro­duce new terms only when the con­cept to be por­trayed finds no ter­mi­nol­ogy in En­glish which can be em­ployed to con­vey such a new con­cept par­tially or even with more or less dis­tor­tion of mean­ing.

0:0.3In the hope of fa­cil­i­tat­ing com­pre­hen­sion and of pre­vent­ing con­fu­sion on the part of ev­ery mor­tal who may pe­ruse these pa­pers, we deem it wise to pre­sent in this ini­tial state­ment an out­line of the mean­ings to be at­tached to nu­mer­ous En­glish words which are to be em­ployed in des­ig­na­tion of De­ity and cer­tain as­so­ci­ated con­cepts of the things, mean­ings, and val­ues of uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

0:0.4But in or­der to for­mu­late this Fore­word of def­i­ni­tions and lim­i­ta­tions of ter­mi­nol­ogy, it is nec­es­sary to an­tic­i­pate the us­age of these terms in the sub­se­quent pre­sen­ta­tions. This Fore­word is not, there­fore, a fin­ished state­ment within it­self; it is only a defini­tive guide de­signed to as­sist those who shall read the ac­com­pa­ny­ing pa­pers deal­ing with De­ity and the uni­verse of uni­verses which have been for­mu­lated by an Or­von­ton com­mis­sion sent to Uran­tia for this pur­pose.

0:0.5Your world, Uran­tia, is one of many sim­i­lar in­hab­ited plan­ets which com­prise the lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don. This uni­verse, to­gether with sim­i­lar cre­ations, makes up the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton, from whose cap­i­tal, Uversa, our com­mis­sion hails. Or­von­ton is one of the seven evo­lu­tion­ary super­uni­verses of time and space which cir­cle the never-be­gin­ning, never-end­ing cre­ation of di­vine per­fec­tion—the cen­tral uni­verse of Ha­vona. At the heart of this eter­nal and cen­tral uni­verse is the sta­tion­ary Isle of Par­a­dise, the ge­o­graphic cen­ter of in­fin­ity and the dwell­ing place of the eter­nal God.

0:0.6The seven evolv­ing super­uni­verses in as­so­ci­a­tion with the cen­tral and di­vine uni­verse, we com­monly re­fer to as the grand uni­verse; these are the now or­ga­nized and in­hab­ited cre­ations. They are all a part of the mas­ter uni­verse, which also em­braces the un­in­hab­ited but mo­bi­liz­ing uni­verses of outer space.