The Universal Father

1:5.1Do not per­mit the mag­ni­tude of God, his in­fin­ity, ei­ther to 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 is the acme of di­vine per­son­al­ity; he is the ori­gin and des­tiny of per­son­al­ity through­out all cre­ation. God is both in­fi­nite and per­sonal; he is an in­fi­nite per­son­al­ity. The Fa­ther is truly a per­son­al­ity, not­with­stand­ing that the in­fin­ity of his per­son places him for­ever be­yond the full com­pre­hen­sion of ma­te­rial and fi­nite be­ings.

1:5.2God is much more than a per­son­al­ity as per­son­al­ity is un­der­stood by the hu­man mind; he is even far more than any pos­si­ble con­cept of a super­per­son­al­ity. But it is ut­terly fu­tile to dis­cuss such in­com­pre­hen­si­ble con­cepts of di­vine per­son­al­ity with the minds of ma­te­rial crea­tures whose max­i­mum con­cept of the re­al­ity of be­ing con­sists in the idea and ideal of per­son­al­ity. The ma­te­rial crea­ture’s high­est pos­si­ble con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Cre­ator is em­braced within the spir­i­tual ide­als of the ex­alted idea of di­vine per­son­al­ity. There­fore, al­though you may know that God must be much more than the hu­man con­cep­tion of per­son­al­ity, you equally well know that the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can­not pos­si­bly be any­thing less than an eter­nal, in­fi­nite, true, good, and beau­ti­ful per­son­al­ity.

1:5.3God is not hid­ing from any of his crea­tures. He is un­ap­proach­able to so many or­ders of be­ings only be­cause he “dwells in a light which no ma­te­rial crea­ture can ap­proach.” The im­men­sity and grandeur of the di­vine per­son­al­ity is be­yond the grasp of the un­per­fected mind of evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals. 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.” “Lift up your eyes on high and be­hold who has cre­ated all these things, who brings out their worlds by num­ber and calls them all by their names”; and so it is true that “the in­vis­i­ble things of God are par­tially un­der­stood by the things which are made.” To­day, and as you are, you must dis­cern the in­vis­i­ble Maker through his man­i­fold and di­verse cre­ation, as well as through the rev­e­la­tion and min­is­tra­tion of his Sons and their nu­mer­ous sub­or­di­nates.

1:5.4Even though ma­te­rial mor­tals can­not see the per­son of God, they should re­joice in the as­sur­ance that he is a per­son; by faith ac­cept the truth which por­trays that the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther so loved the world as to pro­vide for the eter­nal spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion of its lowly in­hab­i­tants; that he “de­lights in his chil­dren.” God is lack­ing in none of those super­hu­man and di­vine at­tri­butes which con­sti­tute a per­fect, eter­nal, lov­ing, and in­fi­nite Cre­ator per­son­al­ity.

1:5.5In the lo­cal cre­ations (ex­cept­ing the per­son­nel of the super­uni­verses) God has no per­sonal or res­i­den­tial man­i­fes­ta­tion aside from the Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons who are the fa­thers of the in­hab­ited worlds and the sov­er­eigns of the lo­cal uni­verses. If the faith of the crea­ture were per­fect, he would as­suredly know that when he had seen a Cre­ator Son he had seen the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; in seek­ing for the Fa­ther, he would not ask nor ex­pect to see other than the Son. Mor­tal man sim­ply can­not see God un­til he achieves com­pleted spirit trans­for­ma­tion and ac­tu­ally at­tains Par­a­dise.

1:5.6The na­tures of the Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons do not en­com­pass all the un­qual­i­fied po­ten­tials of the uni­ver­sal ab­so­lute­ness of the in­fi­nite na­ture of the First Great Source and Cen­ter, but the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is in ev­ery way di­vinely pres­ent in the Cre­ator Sons. The Fa­ther and his Sons are one. These Par­a­dise Sons of the or­der of Mi­chael are per­fect per­son­al­i­ties, even the pat­tern for all lo­cal uni­verse per­son­al­ity from that of the Bright and Morn­ing Star down to the low­est hu­man crea­ture of pro­gress­ing an­i­mal evo­lu­tion.

1:5.7With­out God and ex­cept for his great and cen­tral per­son, there would be no per­son­al­ity through­out all the vast uni­verse of uni­verses. God is per­son­al­ity.

1:5.8Not­with­stand­ing that God is an eter­nal power, a ma­jes­tic pres­ence, a tran­scen­dent ideal, and a glo­ri­ous spirit, though he is all these and in­finitely more, nonethe­less, he is truly and ev­er­last­ingly a per­fect Cre­ator per­son­al­ity, a per­son who can “know and be known,” who can “love and be loved,” and one who can be­friend us; while you can be known, as other hu­mans have been known, as the friend of God. He is a real spirit and a spir­i­tual re­al­ity.

1:5.9As we see the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther re­vealed through­out his uni­verse; as we dis­cern him in­dwelling his myr­i­ads of crea­tures; as we be­hold him in the per­sons of his Sov­er­eign Sons; as we con­tinue to sense his di­vine pres­ence here and there, near and afar, let us not doubt nor ques­tion his per­son­al­ity pri­macy. Not­with­stand­ing all these far-flung dis­tri­bu­tions, he re­mains a true per­son and ev­er­last­ingly main­tains per­sonal con­nec­tion with the count­less hosts of his crea­tures scat­tered through­out the uni­verse of uni­verses.

1:5.10The idea of the per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is an en­larged and truer con­cept of God which has come to man­kind chiefly through rev­e­la­tion. Rea­son, wis­dom, and re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence all in­fer and im­ply the per­son­al­ity of God, but they do not al­to­gether val­i­date it. Even the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster is preper­sonal. The truth and ma­tu­rity of any re­li­gion is di­rectly pro­por­tional to its con­cept of the in­fi­nite per­son­al­ity of God and to its grasp of the ab­so­lute unity of De­ity. The idea of a per­sonal De­ity be­comes, then, the mea­sure of re­li­gious ma­tu­rity af­ter re­li­gion has first for­mu­lated the con­cept of the unity of God.

1:5.11Prim­i­tive re­li­gion had many per­sonal gods, and they were fash­ioned in the im­age of man. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms the va­lid­ity of the per­son­al­ity con­cept of God which is merely pos­si­ble in the sci­en­tific pos­tu­late of a First Cause and is only pro­vi­sion­ally sug­gested in the philo­sophic idea of Uni­ver­sal Unity. Only by per­son­al­ity ap­proach can any per­son be­gin to com­pre­hend the unity of God. To deny the per­son­al­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter leaves one only the choice of two philo­sophic dilem­mas: ma­te­ri­al­ism or pan­the­ism.

1:5.12In the con­tem­pla­tion of De­ity, the con­cept of per­son­al­ity must be di­vested of the idea of cor­po­re­al­ity. A ma­te­rial body is not in­dis­pens­able to per­son­al­ity in ei­ther man or God. The cor­po­re­al­ity er­ror is shown in both ex­tremes of hu­man phi­los­o­phy. In ma­te­ri­al­ism, since man loses his body at death, he ceases to ex­ist as a per­son­al­ity; in pan­the­ism, since God has no body, he is not, there­fore, a per­son. The super­hu­man type of pro­gress­ing per­son­al­ity func­tions in a union of mind and spirit.

1:5.13Per­son­al­ity is not sim­ply an at­tri­bute of God; it rather stands for the to­tal­ity of the co-or­di­nated in­fi­nite na­ture and the uni­fied di­vine will which is ex­hib­ited in eter­nity and uni­ver­sal­ity of per­fect ex­pres­sion. Per­son­al­ity, in the su­preme sense, is the rev­e­la­tion of God to the uni­verse of uni­verses.

1:5.14God, be­ing eter­nal, uni­ver­sal, ab­so­lute, and in­fi­nite, does not grow in knowl­edge nor in­crease in wis­dom. God does not ac­quire ex­pe­ri­ence, as fi­nite man might con­jec­ture or com­pre­hend, but he does, within the realms of his own eter­nal per­son­al­ity, en­joy those con­tin­u­ous ex­pan­sions of self-re­al­iza­tion which are in cer­tain ways com­pa­ra­ble to, and anal­o­gous with, the ac­quire­ment of new ex­pe­ri­ence by the fi­nite crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

1:5.15The ab­so­lute per­fec­tion of the in­fi­nite God would cause him to suf­fer the aw­ful lim­i­ta­tions of un­qual­i­fied fi­nal­ity of per­fect­ness were it not a fact that the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther di­rectly par­tic­i­pates in the per­son­al­ity strug­gle of ev­ery im­per­fect soul in the wide uni­verse who seeks, by di­vine aid, to as­cend to the spir­i­tu­ally per­fect worlds on high. This pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of ev­ery spirit be­ing and ev­ery mor­tal crea­ture through­out the uni­verse of uni­verses is a part of the Fa­ther’s ever-ex­pand­ing De­ity-con­scious­ness of the never-end­ing di­vine cir­cle of cease­less self-re­al­iza­tion.

1:5.16It is lit­er­ally true: “In all your af­flic­tions he is af­flicted.” “In all your tri­umphs he tri­umphs in and with you.” His preper­sonal di­vine spirit is a real part of you. The Isle of Par­a­dise re­sponds to all the phys­i­cal meta­mor­phoses of the uni­verse of uni­verses; the Eter­nal Son in­cludes all the spirit im­pulses of all cre­ation; the Con­joint Ac­tor en­com­passes all the mind ex­pres­sion of the ex­pand­ing cos­mos. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther re­al­izes in the full­ness of the di­vine con­scious­ness all the in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence of the pro­gres­sive strug­gles of the ex­pand­ing minds and the as­cend­ing spir­its of ev­ery en­tity, be­ing, and per­son­al­ity of the whole evo­lu­tion­ary cre­ation of time and space. And all this is lit­er­ally true, for “in Him we all live and move and have our be­ing.”