The Universal Father

1:7.1When Je­sus talked about “the liv­ing God,” he re­ferred to a per­sonal De­ity—the Fa­ther in heaven. The con­cept of the per­son­al­ity of De­ity fa­cil­i­tates fel­low­ship; it fa­vors in­tel­li­gent wor­ship; it pro­motes re­fresh­ing trust­ful­ness. In­ter­ac­tions can be had be­tween non­per­sonal things, but not fel­low­ship. The fel­low­ship re­la­tion of fa­ther and son, as be­tween God and man, can­not be en­joyed un­less both are per­sons. Only per­son­al­i­ties can com­mune with each other, al­beit this per­sonal com­mu­nion may be greatly fa­cil­i­tated by the pres­ence of just such an im­per­sonal en­tity as the Thought Ad­juster.

1:7.2Man does not achieve union with God as a drop of wa­ter might find unity with the ocean. Man at­tains di­vine union by pro­gres­sive re­cip­ro­cal spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, by per­son­al­ity in­ter­course with the per­sonal God, by in­creas­ingly at­tain­ing the di­vine na­ture through whole­hearted and in­tel­li­gent con­for­mity to the di­vine will. Such a sub­lime re­la­tion­ship can ex­ist only be­tween per­son­al­i­ties.

1:7.3The con­cept of truth might pos­si­bly be en­ter­tained apart from per­son­al­ity, the con­cept of beauty may ex­ist with­out per­son­al­ity, but the con­cept of di­vine good­ness is un­der­stand­able only in re­la­tion to per­son­al­ity. Only a per­son can love and be loved. Even beauty and truth would be di­vorced from sur­vival hope if they were not at­tri­butes of a per­sonal God, a lov­ing Fa­ther.

1:7.4We can­not fully un­der­stand how God can be pri­mal, change­less, all-pow­er­ful, and per­fect, and at the same time be sur­rounded by an ever-chang­ing and ap­par­ently law-lim­ited uni­verse, an evolv­ing uni­verse of rel­a­tive im­per­fec­tions. But we can know such a truth in our own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence since we all main­tain iden­tity of per­son­al­ity and unity of will in spite of the con­stant chang­ing of both our­selves and our en­vi­ron­ment.

1:7.5Ul­ti­mate uni­verse re­al­ity can­not be grasped by math­e­mat­ics, logic, or phi­los­o­phy, only by per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in pro­gres­sive con­for­mity to the di­vine will of a per­sonal God. Nei­ther sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, nor the­ol­ogy can val­i­date the per­son­al­ity of God. Only the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of the faith sons of the heav­enly Fa­ther can ef­fect the ac­tual spir­i­tual re­al­iza­tion of the per­son­al­ity of God.

1:7.6The higher con­cepts of uni­verse per­son­al­ity im­ply: iden­tity, self-con­scious­ness, self-will, and pos­si­bil­ity for self-rev­e­la­tion. And these char­ac­ter­is­tics fur­ther im­ply fel­low­ship with other and equal per­son­al­i­ties, such as ex­ists in the per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tions of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties. And the ab­so­lute unity of these as­so­ci­a­tions is so per­fect that di­vin­ity be­comes known by in­di­vis­i­bil­ity, by one­ness. “The Lord God is one.” In­di­vis­i­bil­ity of per­son­al­ity does not in­ter­fere with God’s be­stow­ing his spirit to live in the hearts of mor­tal men. In­di­vis­i­bil­ity of a hu­man fa­ther’s per­son­al­ity does not pre­vent the re­pro­duc­tion of mor­tal sons and daugh­ters.

1:7.7This con­cept of in­di­vis­i­bil­ity in as­so­ci­a­tion with the con­cept of unity im­plies tran­scen­dence of both time and space by the Ul­ti­macy of De­ity; there­fore nei­ther space nor time can be ab­so­lute or in­fi­nite. The First Source and Cen­ter is that in­fin­ity who un­qual­i­fiedly tran­scends all mind, all mat­ter, and all spirit.

1:7.8The fact of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity in no man­ner vi­o­lates the truth of the di­vine unity. The three per­son­al­i­ties of Par­a­dise De­ity are, in all uni­verse re­al­ity re­ac­tions and in all crea­ture re­la­tions, as one. Nei­ther does the ex­is­tence of these three eter­nal per­sons vi­o­late the truth of the in­di­vis­i­bil­ity of De­ity. I am fully aware that I have at my com­mand no lan­guage ad­e­quate to make clear to the mor­tal mind how these uni­verse prob­lems ap­pear to us. But you should not be­come dis­cour­aged; not all of these things are wholly clear to even the high per­son­al­i­ties be­long­ing to my group of Par­a­dise be­ings. Ever bear in mind that these pro­found truths per­tain­ing to De­ity will in­creas­ingly clar­ify as your minds be­come pro­gres­sively spir­i­tu­al­ized dur­ing the suc­ces­sive epochs of the long mor­tal as­cent to Par­a­dise.

1:7.9[Pre­sented by a Di­vine Coun­selor, a mem­ber of a group of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties as­signed by the An­cients of Days on Uversa, the head­quar­ters of the sev­enth super­uni­verse, to super­vise those por­tions of this forth­com­ing rev­e­la­tion which have to do with af­fairs be­yond the bor­ders of the lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don. I am com­mis­sioned to spon­sor those pa­pers por­tray­ing the na­ture and at­tri­butes of God be­cause I rep­re­sent the high­est source of in­for­ma­tion avail­able for such a pur­pose on any in­hab­ited world. I have served as a Di­vine Coun­selor in all seven of the super­uni­verses and have long resided at the Par­a­dise cen­ter of all things. Many times have I en­joyed the su­preme plea­sure of a so­journ in the im­me­di­ate per­sonal pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. I por­tray the re­al­ity and truth of the Fa­ther’s na­ture and at­tri­butes with un­chal­lenge­able au­thor­ity; I know whereof I speak.]