The Universal Father

1:3.1“God is spirit.” He is a uni­ver­sal spir­i­tual pres­ence. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is an in­fi­nite spir­i­tual re­al­ity; he is “the sov­er­eign, eter­nal, im­mor­tal, in­vis­i­ble, and only true God.” Even though you are “the off­spring of God,” you ought not to think that the Fa­ther is like your­selves in form and physique be­cause you are said to be cre­ated “in his im­age”—in­dwelt by Mys­tery Mon­i­tors dis­patched from the cen­tral abode of his eter­nal pres­ence. Spirit be­ings are real, not­with­stand­ing they are in­vis­i­ble to hu­man eyes; even though they have not flesh and blood.

1:3.2Said the seer of old: “Lo, he goes by me, and I see him not; he passes on also, but I per­ceive him not.” We may con­stantly ob­serve the works of God, we may be highly con­scious of the ma­te­rial ev­i­dences of his ma­jes­tic con­duct, but rarely may we gaze upon the vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of his di­vin­ity, not even to be­hold the pres­ence of his del­e­gated spirit of hu­man in­dwelling.

1:3.3The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is not in­vis­i­ble be­cause he is hid­ing him­self away from the lowly crea­tures of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic hand­i­caps and lim­ited spir­i­tual en­dow­ments. The sit­u­a­tion rather is: “You can­not see my face, for no mor­tal can see me and live.” No ma­te­rial man could be­hold the spirit God and pre­serve his mor­tal ex­is­tence. The glory and the spir­i­tual bril­liance of the di­vine per­son­al­ity pres­ence is im­pos­si­ble of ap­proach by the lower groups of spirit be­ings or by any or­der of ma­te­rial per­son­al­i­ties. The spir­i­tual lu­mi­nos­ity of the Fa­ther’s per­sonal pres­ence is a “light which no mor­tal man can ap­proach; which no ma­te­rial crea­ture has seen or can see.” But it is not nec­es­sary to see God with the eyes of the flesh in or­der to dis­cern him by the faith-vi­sion of the spir­i­tu­al­ized mind.

1:3.4The spirit na­ture of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is shared fully with his co­ex­is­tent self, the Eter­nal Son of Par­a­dise. Both the Fa­ther and the Son in like man­ner share the uni­ver­sal and eter­nal spirit fully and un­re­servedly with their con­joint per­son­al­ity co-or­di­nate, the In­fi­nite Spirit. God’s spirit is, in and of him­self, ab­so­lute; in the Son it is un­qual­i­fied, in the Spirit, uni­ver­sal, and in and by all of them, in­fi­nite.

1:3.5God is a uni­ver­sal spirit; God is the uni­ver­sal per­son. The su­preme per­sonal re­al­ity of the fi­nite cre­ation is spirit; the ul­ti­mate re­al­ity of the per­sonal cos­mos is ab­so­nite spirit. Only the lev­els of in­fin­ity are ab­so­lute, and only on such lev­els is there fi­nal­ity of one­ness be­tween mat­ter, mind, and spirit.

1:3.6In the uni­verses God the Fa­ther is, in po­ten­tial, the over­con­trol­ler of mat­ter, mind, and spirit. Only by means of his far-flung per­son­al­ity cir­cuit does God deal di­rectly with the per­son­al­i­ties of his vast cre­ation of will crea­tures, but he is con­tactable (out­side of Par­a­dise) only in the pres­ences of his frag­mented en­ti­ties, the will of God abroad in the uni­verses. This Par­a­dise spirit that in­dwells the minds of the mor­tals of time and there fos­ters the evo­lu­tion of the im­mor­tal soul of the sur­viv­ing crea­ture is of the na­ture and di­vin­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. But the minds of such evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures orig­i­nate in the lo­cal uni­verses and must gain di­vine per­fec­tion by achiev­ing those ex­pe­ri­en­tial trans­for­ma­tions of spir­i­tual at­tain­ment which are the in­ev­i­ta­ble re­sult of a crea­ture’s choos­ing to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

1:3.7In the in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence of man, mind is joined to mat­ter. Such ma­te­rial-linked minds can­not sur­vive mor­tal death. The tech­nique of sur­vival is em­braced in those ad­just­ments of the hu­man will and those trans­for­ma­tions in the mor­tal mind whereby such a God-con­scious in­tel­lect grad­u­ally be­comes spirit taught and even­tu­ally spirit led. This evo­lu­tion of the hu­man mind from mat­ter as­so­ci­a­tion to spirit union re­sults in the trans­mu­ta­tion of the po­ten­tially spirit phases of the mor­tal mind into the mor­ontia re­al­i­ties of the im­mor­tal soul. Mor­tal mind sub­servient to mat­ter is des­tined to be­come in­creas­ingly ma­te­rial and con­se­quently to suf­fer even­tual per­son­al­ity ex­tinc­tion; mind yielded to spirit is des­tined to be­come in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual and ul­ti­mately to achieve one­ness with the sur­viv­ing and guid­ing di­vine spirit and in this way to at­tain sur­vival and eter­nity of per­son­al­ity ex­is­tence.

1:3.8I 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. I know the truth of the great dec­la­ra­tions: “God is spirit” and “God is love,” and these two at­tri­butes are most com­pletely re­vealed to the uni­verse in the Eter­nal Son.