The Universal Father

1:6.1Hu­man per­son­al­ity is the time-space im­age-shadow cast by the di­vine Cre­ator per­son­al­ity. And no ac­tu­al­ity can ever be ad­e­quately com­pre­hended by an ex­am­i­na­tion of its shadow. Shad­ows should be in­ter­preted in terms of the true sub­stance.

1:6.2God is to sci­ence a cause, to phi­los­o­phy an idea, to re­li­gion a per­son, even the lov­ing heav­enly Fa­ther. God is to the sci­en­tist a pri­mal force, to the philoso­pher a hy­poth­e­sis of unity, to the re­li­gion­ist a liv­ing spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Man’s in­ad­e­quate con­cept of the per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can be im­proved only by man’s spir­i­tual prog­ress in the uni­verse and will be­come truly ad­e­quate only when the pil­grims of time and space fi­nally at­tain the di­vine em­brace of the liv­ing God on Par­a­dise.

1:6.3Never lose sight of the an­tipo­dal view­points of per­son­al­ity as it is con­ceived by God and man. Man views and com­pre­hends per­son­al­ity, look­ing from the fi­nite to the in­fi­nite; God looks from the in­fi­nite to the fi­nite. Man pos­sesses the low­est type of per­son­al­ity; God, the high­est, even su­preme, ul­ti­mate, and ab­so­lute. There­fore did the bet­ter con­cepts of the di­vine per­son­al­ity have pa­tiently to await the ap­pear­ance of im­proved ideas of hu­man per­son­al­ity, es­pe­cially the en­hanced rev­e­la­tion of both hu­man and di­vine per­son­al­ity in the Uran­tian be­stowal life of Mi­chael, the Cre­ator Son.

1:6.4The preper­sonal di­vine spirit which in­dwells the mor­tal mind car­ries, in its very pres­ence, the valid proof of its ac­tual ex­is­tence, but the con­cept of the di­vine per­son­al­ity can be grasped only by the spir­i­tual in­sight of gen­uine per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Any per­son, hu­man or di­vine, may be known and com­pre­hended quite apart from the ex­ter­nal re­ac­tions or the ma­te­rial pres­ence of that per­son.

1:6.5Some de­gree of moral affin­ity and spir­i­tual har­mony is es­sen­tial to friend­ship be­tween two per­sons; a lov­ing per­son­al­ity can hardly re­veal him­self to a love­less per­son. Even to ap­proach the know­ing of a di­vine per­son­al­ity, all of man’s per­son­al­ity en­dow­ments must be wholly con­se­crated to the ef­fort; half­hearted, par­tial de­vo­tion will be un­avail­ing.

1:6.6The more com­pletely man un­der­stands him­self and ap­pre­ci­ates the per­son­al­ity val­ues of his fel­lows, the more he will crave to know the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity, and the more earnestly such a God-know­ing hu­man will strive to be­come like the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity. You can ar­gue over opin­ions about God, but ex­pe­ri­ence with him and in him ex­ists above and be­yond all hu­man con­tro­versy and mere in­tel­lec­tual logic. The God-know­ing man de­scribes his spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ences, not to con­vince un­be­liev­ers, but for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion and mu­tual sat­is­fac­tion of be­liev­ers.

1:6.7To as­sume that the uni­verse can be known, that it is in­tel­li­gi­ble, is to as­sume that the uni­verse is mind made and per­son­al­ity man­aged. Man’s mind can only per­ceive the mind phe­nom­ena of other minds, be they hu­man or super­hu­man. If man’s per­son­al­ity can ex­pe­ri­ence the uni­verse, there is a di­vine mind and an ac­tual per­son­al­ity some­where con­cealed in that uni­verse.

1:6.8God is spirit—spirit per­son­al­ity; man is also a spirit—po­ten­tial spirit per­son­al­ity. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth at­tained the full re­al­iza­tion of this po­ten­tial of spirit per­son­al­ity in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; there­fore his life of achiev­ing the Fa­ther’s will be­comes man’s most real and ideal rev­e­la­tion of the per­son­al­ity of God. Even though the per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can be grasped only in ac­tual re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, in Je­sus’ earth life we are in­spired by the per­fect dem­on­stra­tion of such a re­al­iza­tion and rev­e­la­tion of the per­son­al­ity of God in a truly hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.